Hermione Granger's Guide To Gender Flip Fanfiction
by Hyaroo
Summary: Hermione gives a lecture on "gender flip fanfiction"; i.e. fanfiction depicting an AU where one or more characters has been born the opposite sex. Of course, when the ones attending the lecture are Harry and Ron... or should that perhaps be "Holly" and "Ronnie"?... it might get a little difficult to stay on track. A very meta story.
1. Ronnie

**Hi! If you're wondering about the next chapter for _Weasley Girl,_ it's about half-written and shouldn't take too long in the coming. I just got hit with the inspitation/desire to do something slightly different...  
**

* * *

 **Hermione Granger's Guide to  
GENDER-FLIP FANFICTION**

 **A Study in Writing Fanfic Where One Or More Characters Are The Opposite Sex From Canon**

* * *

"Wait. _Gender-flip_ fanfiction?" Harry looked up at the title with some confusion, re-reading it in order to make certain he hadn't misread something. "I thought fanfics where someone is the opposite sex from what they are in canon were called _gender-bender_ or _Rule 63_ or something like that."

"Well," said Hermione. "Technically, you're right. Both those terms are common, though they are both much broader and used in many other contexts. 'Gender-flip' is a little more specific. I will admit I borrowed it from _TV Tropes,_ but —"

"Hang on." Ron raised a hand, looking around with a puzzled expression. "Before we continue this, I have two... no, wait, _three_ questions."

Harry and Hermione both looked at him.

"Question number one," said Ron, counting on his fingers. "Where exactly are we?"

They all looked around.

"I have no idea," Harry finally admitted. "The scene hasn't been established yet. Could be anywhere. The narrative hasn't exactly provided a lot of details."

"Right. Okay. That brings me to question number two." Ron raised a second finger. "How come we know what the narrative has or hasn't provided? We're not supposed to know what the text says. Hell, you just read the title. Who are you, Deadpool?" He paused, then raised a third finger. "Additional question: how do I even know who Deadpool is? I'm not supposed to know about Muggle pop culture, and yet I understood everything you two were saying when you talked about fanfiction and _TV Tropes_ and Rule 63. How come?"

"I think this story's just extremely meta," said Harry. "For the sake of the narrative, we all know things we wouldn't otherwise. Sorry, mate, that's the best answer I have."

"Thanks," said Ron, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Third — no, sorry, _fourth_ and final question." He held up four fingers. "This isn't canon, is it?"

"No, Ron, this isn't canon," Hermione huffed. "Honestly. If this was canon, do you think I would even be talking about fanfiction in this way?"

Ron shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe if Jo felt like playing a joke on us, or lost her mind, or something like that."

"Jo's not writing this!" said Hermione. "This is a _fanfic,_ Ron! Posted online because some fanfic writer was thinking about gender-flip fanfiction and decided to write about it in the form of a fanfic instead of a normal rant. It might be slightly unorthodox, but it's hardly the first time any of us have been used to express a fanfiction author's ideas and opinions before."

"So you're basically the author's mouthpiece in this story?" said Harry, trying to hide a smirk.

Hermione huffed. "If you absolutely have to put it that way. I do like to think that I don't share _all_ the author's opinions, though. I know for a fact we disagree on a number of things. Now, can we just get on with it? We've wasted fourteen paragraphs and close to five hundred words on all this, and I would like to get to the point."

"Can we at least establish where we are first?" said Ron. "I hate being in a scene and not knowing where it takes place. Feels eerie."

"Oh, all right." Hermione sighed. "Let's say we're in the Room or Requirement. It's a bit of a cliché to use, but it's flexible."

The Room of Requirement formed around them. Possibly because it was Hermione who had suggested it, the Room had taken form of an empty classroom, with an oversized teacher's desk overflowing with books and scrolls, paper and parchment. On the wall behind said desk was a huge blackboard proudly sporting the text:

 _Hermione Granger's Guide to  
GENDER-FLIP FANFICTION_

 _A Study in Writing Fanfic Where One Or More Characters Are The Opposite Sex From Canon_

Just like the title of the story, in fact, only represented by italics instead of bold text.

Hermione looked around with some satisfaction, before turning to look at Harry and Ron. "There," she said. "Happy now?"

Ron breathed a sigh of relief, sank down in the chair that materialised just behind him, and gave her a thumbs-up.

"Glad to know it," said Hermione. "Now then. Let's get started. New paragraph, please."

One new paragraph later, she strode up to the blackboard, where the text was written. She took her wand out of her pocket and used it as a (rather short) pointer, indicating the words as she spoke: "Gender-flip fanfiction."

"Gender-flip fanfiction," Ron repeated.

"Thank you, Ron, but you don't actually have to repeat what I say. _Gender-flip fanfiction._ A term used, as I said before, on the _TV Tropes_ site, for fanfictions that depict an alternate universe in which one or more characters was born as the opposite sex."

Hermione tapped the blackboard with her wand, and the written text vanished, replaced with the word _REASONS._

"Let's discuss, briefly, the reasons for the existence of such fanfics. Why do you think some people write fanfiction in which, say, Harry is a girl? Yes, Harry?"

Harry didn't quite know why he'd raised his hand. Must be the classroom environment. "Er," he said. "Maybe the author is a girl and decides to write me as a girl to better identify with me?"

Hermione nodded and tapped the blackboard with her wand again, and the word _IDENTIFICATION_ appeared. "Very good. Though it seems that a majority of female fanfic authors tend to identify more with _me_ and so make _me_ the main character, even if they have to severely warp my personality for some of the plots they have in mind... but yes, valid reason. Can we think of anything else?"

"Maybe they want Harry to get together with, er, Fred or George," said Ron, "but don't wanna write slash, so they just change him into a girl?"

"Romance," said Hermione, tapping the blackboard so that the word _ROMANCE_ appeared underneath _IDENTIFICATION_. "One of the most popular, if not _the_ most popular, reasons for a gender-flip. In fact, it's so common that a lot of readers just take it for granted that the change in sexes has been done for the sake of a romantic pairing. Excellent, Ron. More reasons?"

"Er..." Ron hesitated. "They just wanna write a kick-arse girl as the main character and don't think any of the canon girls will do?"

Tap went Hermione's wand, and the words _FEMINIST FANTASY_ appeared.

"Or they just wanna write porn and think a girl Harry would make for... sexier porn." Ron's ears turned pink.

Hermione looked about as embarrassed as Ron did, but added _SEXUAL GRATIFICATION_ to the list.

"Maybe," said Harry, trying to put words around the idea floating around in his head. "Maybe they would see what it was like for a Girl Who Lived... Like, how would Muggle and wizard society treat me if I was a girl? Would it be the same, or would I be treated differently... Like, given how boys and girls tend to get different responses, they'd probably talk more about how pretty or charming I was..."

"Yes!" Hermione beamed as if Harry had said something particularly clever, and added _EXPLORATION OF GENDER ROLES IN MUGGLE AND WIZARD SOCIETY_ to the bottom of the list.

"Now, there are probably more reasons, but I think this should make for a good representative list. As we can see," (she motioned to the entire list) "there are several reasons why an author might write a gender-flip fic. And of course, it doesn't have to be limited to just one reason either; it's perfectly possible for an author to have several goals with the same story."

"Like a romance story that also examines gender roles," said Harry.

"For example," Hermione agreed. "There are a lot of stories that can be told just by changing the sex of one character, or of course several characters. Any questions before we move on? Yes, Harry?"

"Er," said Harry. "Just wondering. You call it _'gender_ -flip,' but you always say 'opposite _sex_.' Are they the same thing, or what?"

"Ah." Hermione nodded, as if pleased. "Good question. And the answer is that no, they're not. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but a little simplified we can say that 'sex' is about biology and physical differences, while 'gender' is about identity and social factors such as values, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes."

Harry and Ron stared blankly at her.

"That's simplified, is it?" said Ron.

Hermione sighed, muttering something under her breath about ignorant oafs. "My point is that 'gender' is a very complicated social construct, based on but not necessarily the same as 'sex.' It's certainly very possible for the two to clash in one person - like for example a person being born male yet identifying as female, perhaps feeling like they were born in the wrong body. This is known as 'gender dysphoria' and is a rather big topic which we don't have time to go into detail about now."

"Oh yeah," said Ron, looking like something was dawning on him. "That'd be like my cousin Jack. Much older than us. Was born a boy, but always wanted to be a girl, so two years before she started Hogwarts, she managed to convince her parents that she should be a girl —"

"Wait," said Harry. "He became a girl and you still call him Jack?"

"Her," Ron corrected. "It's short for Jaqueline."

"Oh."

"Anyway, what happened was that she got this sex-change potion. At first she had to keep taking the potion every couple of days to avoid turning back into a boy, but after a few years on the potion the effect was permanent, so now she's a full-time girl."

"Sounds a lot easier than what transgender Muggles have to go through," said Hermione.

"Yeah, well, it's fantasy, innit?"

Harry was about to laugh, but then thought better of it. "Ron," he said. "Was _any_ of that canon? At all?"

"Nah." Ron grinned. "Far as I know, there's no Jaqueline Weasley on any canon family trees. Or any transgender Weasleys, for that matter. Still — you never know. Now that we've invented her, maybe she'll show up in a fanfic sometime."

"Sex-change potions aren't strictly canon anyway," said Hermione, "but given the existence of Polyjuice Potion, which has been shown capable of altering someone's physical sex, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that purely sex-change potions might exist as well."

"Fair enough," said Harry.

"You wouldn't believe how many stories have you transform irreversibly into a girl because of an accident in Potions," Hermione went on. "But that would be a gender- _change_ story. It covers some similar ground, but isn't quite the same as a gender- _flip_ story, which would have you born a girl from the start. Though," she added thoughtfully, "a gender-change story often does deal with gender dysphoria at least on a shallow level, as you tend to react rather negatively to being a girl, and continue identifying as a boy, at least at first. That said, the treatment of the gender dysphoria tends to be rather poorly-researched, if at all, and the resolution tends to be... extremely simplified."

"I turn back into a boy?"

"No, you get used to being a girl, decide you like it and end up romantically involved with Draco Malfoy, or with Professor Snape."

Harry grimaced, demonstrating that in this author's stories at least, the Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape pairings were extremely unlikely to ever happen, gender _or_ sex notwithstanding. "Ugh."

"Agreed," said Ron, demonstrating that he at least in this story shared the author's opinion on the Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape pairings. "Oy," he suddenly said, frowning at the narrative text. "Are you implying I'm a homophobe?"

The narrative hurried to add that Ron had no problems with, say, a Harry/Cedric or Harry/Neville pairing, and might even approve of a Harry/Ron pairing, as long as neither Snape nor Draco was involved.

"Well," said Ron, slightly mollified. "All right, then."

Hermione sighed. "Ron, if we're going to keep having these pointless asides just to demonstrate how metafictional we are, we'll never get to the point."

"Sorry."

"Suffice to say," said Hermione, trying to get back on track, "when I talk about 'gender- _flip_ stories,' I mean stories in which a character does not change sex during the story itself, but rather is presented as having been _born_ that sex. I suppose we use 'gender-flip' (or 'gender-bender' for that matter) because 'sex-flip' sounds more like it would be a rather adult-rated story... _Is that funny, Ron?"_

Ron tried to stifle his sniggering, but then gave up. "Er — yeah, it kinda is. Especially since we talked about... porn... earlier..."

Hermione rolled her eyes and cleared her throat loudly. "The _thing_ about gender-flip fanfiction is that it takes a bit more preparation and planning. Changing a character during the story itself allows you to start out with the canon character and then document the changes in the writing... But starting the story with the character having been born the opposite sex, you need to take into account that said character's life and history probably won't have been exactly the same. I think we need a demonstration. Ron, stand up, please."

"What?" Ron had stopped laughing. "Er — you mean, you're going to change me into a girl just because I was annoying you?"

"No, that's not the only reason," said Hermione. "And I'm not _exactly_ going to turn you into a girl. I'm going to change you into someone who's always been a girl."

"Right. That makes perfect sense."

"It will in a moment," said Hermione, pointing her wand at him. "Don't worry, none of this is canon, remember? Nothing that happens in this story will affect us, either in canon or in other fanfics."

"Yeah, okay, but why me and not Harry? Harry's the one they all turn into a girl in their stories!"

"That's why we're going to get to Harry later," said Hermione. "There's a lot more ground to cover with Harry, so you make for a better introduction. Now, if you'll forgive a blatantly non-canon spell... _Puella Transmutatio!"_

With that hastily-put-together spell created with a English-to-Latin dictionary, a jet of pink light shot out of her wand and hit Ron, who jerked and shot up off his chair.

Almost before he was fully on his feet, the transformation was almost complete; it was like watching someone take Polyjuice potion except instead of changing into a different person altogether, Ron simply grew more feminine-looking. His face turned slightly softer and rounder, and while his characteristic freckles remained almost unchanged, his features turned marginally more delicate and his short ginger hair shot out and lengthened to reach down past his shoulders. He shrank perhaps an inch, which wasn't quite enough for his too-small, second-hand robes to fit perfectly, especially since his general body shape also altered, just a little...

The entire thing took perhaps three seconds. The Ron who stood there, swaying slightly and blinking in mild confusion, was still tall, thin, lanky and freckly, and would probably not have won any beauty contests, but there was no mistake: He — _she_ — was decidedly female.

"Bloody hell," she said, in a voice that absolutely did not belong to a male, but in a tone that was still unmistakably Ron. "That felt _weird."_

"Errr... Ron?" said Harry, a little uncertainly.

She turned to look at him, and a wry smirk spread on her lips. "Yeah, that's me! Well, kinda."

 _"Kinda?!"_

"Well, there _are_ one or two obvious differences from before, right?" she sniggered. "Right now, I'm Fem!Ron."

Harry rubbed his forehead slightly. The girl in front of him was — well, it was Ron, and yet it wasn't. Her eyes were Ron's, and her expression was exactly like the one Ron always had whenever he thought something was amusing. Even the posture and the way she gestured was unmistakably Ron-like. But...

"...Fem!Ron," he said.

"Yep. 'Fem' for 'female,' of course. Good pronunciation there, by the way. Not many people get that exclamation mark right on the first go."

"You're Ron as a girl."

"You've always been quick on the uptake, haven't you?" The girl grinned in a very Ron-like fashion. "My real name's Veronica. Call me 'Ronnie.' That's what you usually call me."

"What d'you mean, it's what I usually —"

"Don't worry, Harry," said Hermione, placing down her wand and looking like she was trying very hard not to smile. "Remember, 'gender-flip' means that she character was born the opposite sex. So now she remembers always having been a girl."

"Because I always have," said Ronnie.

"No, you haven't!" Harry insisted. "Hermione _just_ turned you into a girl! I saw it happening!"

"Yeah, but she inserted a new personal history with that." Ronnie shrugged. "So now I'm Veronica Weasley. First-born girl of the Weasley clan for generations. Fem!Ron."

Harry rubbed his scar. It wasn't that it was hurting, it was just that this was getting rather confusing. His best friend suddenly turned into a girl now insisting he had always been a girl, even if —

"She," Ronnie interrupted the narrative, demonstrating that she could still read the text of the story no matter what else had changed. "I'm a she, not a he."

Harry was starting to get a little annoyed at the meta levels of this story, but he still tried to make some kind of sense of all this. "But — you remember being a boy, right?"

"Yeah, but you said it yourself: This story's meta. _Hah!"_ Ronnie pointed triumphantly at him. "Got you back!"

Harry briefly hid his face in his hands. The next time someone told him that girls were naturally more mature than boys, he thought, he'd laugh in their face.

"If you two are quite finished," said Hermione dryly, "I was about to say that the reason I turned Ronald into Veronica is because our author has a bit of experience writing a female Ron, or to use the official term, Fem!Ron."

"Yeah, I'm from a story called _Weasley Girl,"_ said Ronnie. "Alternate-universe written by the same author who's writing this story right now, it was mentioned in that brief message to the reader at the beginning. And in that universe I was born a girl. You first met and made friends with me on the Hogwarts Express, just like in canon, except, well, I was a girl."

Harry tried to mentally swap out his best friend with a female version, but couldn't really manage.

"Lots of people thought it was a weird idea, actually," said Ronnie. "You should have heard them. _What's the point in turning Ron into a girl, when we already have Ginny?_ Others seemed to like the idea, though."

"Wait," said Harry. "So you're essentially a replacement for Ginny?"

"Course not. Ginny's still in the story. If she wasn't, then I _would_ essentially just be an older Ginny, wouldn't I? This way, I'm not just an older Ginny, I'm unique. I'm Ginny's Big Sister." She carefully inserted the capital letters on those last two words. "And at the time of writing, trying to get her to admit to you that she fancies you. Wouldn't call myself a _matchmaker_ , but, you know."

"No," Harry admitted. "I don't know."

"Well, a lot of the readers seem to want _us_ to get together," said Ronnie. "There's been a lot of reviews asking for it to happen. Author even ran a 'shipping poll' for fun, asking which couple the readers would like, and Harry/Ronnie was by far the most popular."

"That," said Hermione, "does touch on what we said earlier, about how gender-flip fanfics are so often used for romance that a lot of readers take it for granted that romance will happen. Or at least consider it a waste if it doesn't."

"Well, you don't know," said Ronnie stubbornly. "Currently, in my story, I just think romance is a bloody waste of time. Besides — not saying you're completely without charm, Harry, but despite what a lot of fanfic writers seem to think, you're not so hot that every single girl goes nuts over you."

"Right then." Harry tried to hide his embarrassment, but then realised that everyone would be able to read that he was embarrassed and trying to hide it, so he gave up.

Ronnie turned to face the readers. "I'm sorry people, but I really wouldn't hold my breath. The shipping poll was just for fun and not likely to influence the story much. _Weasley Girl_ isn't about romance, and just cause I'm a girl it doesn't mean that I'm gonna fall for Harry. That said, those reviews where you had Harry singing _I Wanna Know What Love Is_ were pretty funny."

"Currently, in your story, you're twelve years old," said Hermione, somewhat dryly. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you come around to the idea later. But let's cross that bridge if and when we reach it. As for now, Ronnie, as an example of a gender-flipped character, can you tell us a little about yourself?"

"Er, okay," said Ronnie. "Like I said, I'm from the story _Weasley Girl_ , where the premise is that Ron Weasley was born a girl, and given the name Veronica. The story's kinda like the author's response to all the Fem!Harry stories out there, because while there _are_ a couple of Fem!Ron stories there aren't all that many, and —"

"I _meant_ , tell us about yourself as a _character_ ," said Hermione. "How has being a girl made you different from canon Ron?"

"You mean apart from the fact that canon Ron's unlikely to grow tits any time soon?" said Ronnie innocently.

"Yes, apart from that," Hermione sighed. "I'm _so_ glad we're treating this subject with maturity."

Ronnie giggled — a bit of a girlish giggle, really — but then grew a little more serious. "All right. Let's see. Well, right from the start, being a girl gave me a somewhat different outlook on things, as well as a better sense of my own worth. I mean, look at canon Ron. Poor bloke's the second youngest of seven siblings, all his older brothers are supremely talented in some way or other, and Ginny's not only younger than him, but the only girl in the family, and, it's hinted, also more talented and gifted than him. He grew up, overshadowed by everyone in his family, and that wreaked havoc with his self-esteem."

"But you don't have that problem?" said Hermione.

"Hah! If anything, I think too highly of myself," said Ronnie. "In my case, Percy and Fred and George are kinda really overprotective, even if Fred and George spend about as much time teasing and pranking as they do protecting. Kind of annoys me that they see the need to protect me just because I'm a girl, so I tend to think I can do anything. And I'm more impulsive and often get myself into difficult situations because I bite off more than I can chew." She paused, frowning slightly. "So actually, the protectiveness makes a bit of sense. Maybe it's not 'cause I'm a girl at all, maybe it's because I'm just reckless. Blimey, this 'being meta' thing is weird. I'm not usually this insightful about myself."

"You get used to it," said Hermione. "Continue, please."

"Right, well, er, Fred never changed my teddy bear into a spider, so I don't have canon Ron's arachnophobia. I _like_ spiders. Actually, I like all animals."

"Yes," said Hermione. "Don't you have a rather uncanny way with animals? They all tend to like you, as I understand it."

"It's kind of an exaggeration of something the author saw in canon Ron," Ronnie explained. "You know in the books how occasionally an animal would take a liking to him? It's like that, except it's a major trait of mine. To compensate for it, because the author didn't just want me to be 'better than Ron in every way,' I lack a couple of his strengths. I don't have his skill with chess, for example."

"So you love animals and hate chess?" said Harry. "We're not exactly rocking any gender stereotypes here, are we?"

"I know," Ronnie muttered. "If it helps, the story depicts Charlie as having the same gift with animals. Backstory pretty much implies that in canon, Ron took to chess because it was the only thing he found he had a talent for, that none of his family could do better. In my case, I was busy with my animals, so I never developed a taste for the game."

"Hmm." Harry thought about this, but then another thought struck him. "Wait — if you don't like chess, how did we get past the giant chess set to get to the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Er — well, the story kinda went very differently in the first place." Ronnie counted on her fingers. "First of all, Quirrell was exposed earlier. You see, at the Hogwarts Express, since I'm not afraid of spiders, I took you along to take a peek at Lee Jordan's tarantula, which means we never talked about the Gringotts break-in on the train, and you didn't get the Chocolate Frog card that mentioned Nicolas Flamel because we weren't in the compartment when the trolley came by, and our first meetings with Hermione and Neville went differently, which meant that we were friends with Hermione and Neville from the start, and that meant Snape was even _more_ horrible to us because as a gang of four we reminded him of the Marauders, and _that_ meant —"

"Never mind!" said Harry hurriedly. "I get it. Small changes lead to bigger changes, which lead to a different story."

"Also known as the Butterfly Effect," said Hermione. "After the idea of chaos theory, that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might eventually cause a storm in another part. For the story of _Weasley Girl,_ you could view Ronnie's birth as the butterfly which inadvertently alters large chunks of how the story goes. Not all of it, mind you — Harry still grew up with the Dursleys, Quirrell still got himself possessed by Voldemort and tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone, Dumbledore is still Headmaster of Hogwarts and I'm still the first in our class to get the _Wingardium Leviosa_ charm right, because those are things that wouldn't be affected by Ron being a girl."

"So is that the point of that particular story?" said Harry. "Just to introduce that one change and see what happens because of it?"

"Largely, I think," said Hermione. "I believe the author took it as a bit of a challenge to see how big the changes could get while remaining plausible within the world depicted in the canon books."

"So that's yet another reason for a gender-flip fanfiction," Harry concluded. "Just to see what happens."

"Yes... But in essence, most if not all fanfiction is based around the question 'what if,' so it's hardly unique there," said Hermione. "But that's Ronnie. As you can see, she has a lot in common with canon Ron; blunt and sarcastic, not always very sensitive, a little lazy when it comes to schoolwork, fiery temper, a tendency to judge too quickly..."

"Flatterer, aren't you?" Ronnie muttered.

"But a very good friend all the same," said Hermione quickly. "Protective of her loved ones, loyal and witty." She cleared her throat. "But she's also very different from canon Ron in many ways, in addition to her sex and her exaggerated affinity for animals. Largely because her upbringing was slightly different. Because she is a girl, and always knew she was special, she is more self-assured, more impulsive, more... _Hey!"_

"Cuddlier!" said Ronnie with a smirk as she pulled Hermione into a big hug.

"Yes, that — you can stop hugging me now."

"I'm a girl, I'm allowed." But Ronnie did let Hermione go.

"Yes. Well." Hermione straightened her robes a little. "Society certainly allows for girls to express physical affection more often, and in more blatant ways, than boys."

"Are you saying that if society allowed it, Ron would go around hugging people?" said Harry.

"He could certainly do with a few more hugs in his life, if you ask me," said Ronnie.

"Thank you, Veronica," said Hermione with slight annoyance. "So. Veronica Weasley. An example of a gender-flipped character and how the change of a simple chromosome might result in a lot of changes. Any questions so far?"

"Yes, one," said Harry. He turned to Ronnie. "What did you see when you looked into the Mirror of Erised?"

She blinked, and then turned a rather bright shade of pink that clashed rather horribly with her ginger hair. "Er. Are you so sure I ever looked into the Mirror of Erised? Story developed differently, remember?"

"It's a very convenient tool for character exploration and revelation," said Harry, secretly impressed at his almost Hermione-like vocabulary. "I don't think the author would have passed up the chance. Besides... you're blushing."

"Damn," Ronnie muttered. "Can't go a single chapter without turning pink. Not even in a blatant non-canon appearance. What a stupid running gag."

"Sorry," said Harry. "It's a personal question, I get that. I still want to know, though."

"Well... actually, what I saw wasn't that different from what Ron saw. I saw myself as grown-up, accomplished... my family all really proud of me. Er... I kinda saw myself as really beautiful too. "

"I doubt Ron saw that last part," said Harry. "Unless there was something he didn't tell me."He paused, thinking back to the scene from _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone._ "Now that I think about it, he didn't really go much into detail."

"It's an interesting distinction, though," said Hermione. "The fact that you distinctly mentioned your family being proud of you, while Ron did not, suggests that there is a slight difference in otherwise similar desires. Ron always felt overshadowed by his older brothers, while you always felt overprotected by them."

"So?"

"So, it means that Ron wants _recognition_ , while you want _respect_. Similar, but different — and understandable, given your similar, but different upbringings!" Hermione nodded in satisfaction and went back to the blackboard, tapping it with her wand.

The list disappeared and left the blackboard blank once again.

"So," said Hermione, Encouraging Teacher, "what have we learned from all this?"

Harry and Ronnie exchanged glances.

"That Ron's got emotional insecurities and I need a reality check?" said Ronnie.

"I meant about the — oh, never mind!" Hermione tapped the blackboard with her wand again, and the words _SIMILAR, BUT DIFFERENT_ appeared. "These are important words to consider with Ronnie's type of gender-flipped character... Or for that matter, most types of gender-flipped characters. Similar enough to her male counterpart that she can occupy roughly the same role, but different enough that she's her own person and not just a carbon copy. Of course, just _how_ similar or _how_ different will vary from story to story. Sometimes the differences are barely even noticeable — sometimes they're so vast that the character is completely unrecognisable."

"All right," said Ronnie gleefully. "Is there a story where I'm — I mean, where _Ron_ is..." she paused, clearly trying to think of something ludicrous. "A green-skinned alien girl from the planet Wongo... mmm... who eats cutlery and has the, err, ability to communicate with... socks?"

"I doubt it," said Hermione dryly. "I wouldn't be surprised if there was a story out there where _Harry_ was like that, though."

"Really?!" said Harry.

"Well, as far as I know there isn't, but you _have_ been getting a lot of rather strange gender-flip treatments in various fanfics." Hermione shrugged. "Speaking of which: Now that we've had Ronnie presented to us, it's your turn."

Harry blinked. "Errrr... my turn?" He looked nervously at her, then at Ronnie. "I'm really quite happy being a boy, you know! Besides, haven't we already demonstrated what a gender-flipped character looks like?"

"True, but we haven't gone through all that many of the possibilities," said Hermione. "Ronnie's a preview, so to speak, She's an established character for this author, so we didn't really go through the creation process. With you, we're going to!"

"Besides," Ronnie sighed, "It's _you_ the readers all want to see as a girl. Nobody cares about Fem!Ron, if there's going to be a gender-flip it's _Fem!Harry_ they want and expect!"

"You _are_ the one character in the franchise who gets gender-flipped the most often, Harry," said Hermione. "It's quite rare for someone else to get the treatment; and even when they do you usually change as well. _Weasley Girl_ is one of relatively few exceptions. Don't worry, it's quite painless."

"I suppose," Harry sighed. "Can't we take a break first, though?"

"A break?" Hermione blinked. "We've only just started. There's a lot more ground to cover."

"Which is why we should take a break," said Harry. "You'll end up tiring out both us and the readers if we do this all in one go."

"He does have a point, y'know," said Ronnie. "We _have_ been at this for over five thousand words, and I don't know how many paragraphs."

"One hundred and seventy-three, including this one," Hermione muttered under her breath.

Ronnie blinked. _"You know how many paragraphs_ — what am I saying, of _course_ you know. You're _scary_ sometimes." Her voice was just awed enough, however, that this sounded like a compliment rather than an insult.

Hermione blushed, but looked pleased. "Well, you knew the approximation of how many words it had been."

"Yeah, but I used the word counter."

Hermione shook her head and smiled."Oh, all right. A break. There's nothing wrong with a little study break every now and then, to help gather focus. Then we'll start a new chapter, and we can present Fem!Harry, and the process of creating a gender-flipped character, in that next chapter."

"Right," said Harry, though less than enthusiastically. _At least this isn't canon_ , he reminded himself.

"In the meantime, " said Hermione, "how about some refreshments?"

All of a sudden, a table materialized to one side, upon which was a large silver plate filled with sandwiches, and three bottles of Butterbeer.

"I like the way you think," said Ronnie. "Wait, I thought the Room of Requirement couldn't provide food or drink? It's to do with that Gaunt's Law of Exceptions to Tranfiguration thing..."

"That's _Gamp's_ Law," said Hermione. "The _Gaunts_ were Voldemort's family. And you're right, canonically the Room can't provide food or drink. But as we've repeatedly stated, this isn't canon. In _this_ story, anything a character requests can be provided; Food, drink, living creatures. It would be a huge deal-breaker if this story hadn't been so meta, but since this is only a lecture and the three of us are the only ones here..."

"Good enough for me," said Harry, deciding to enjoy the break while he could. "Pass me a bacon sandwich, please."

As they tucked in, the text on the blackboard changed, all of its own accord, to read:

* * *

 **TO BE CONTINUED...**

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** So, this was really just going to be a one-shot, but it got a little long, and then —

"Do you mind?" said Ronnie. "We're trying to eat here."

Ah. Sorry.


	2. Holly

**And we are back! Some of the opinions expressed in this chapter accurately expresses the author's own opinions, while others do not. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.**

* * *

 **Hermione Granger's Guide to  
GENDER-FLIP FANFICTION**

 **A Study in Writing Fanfic Where One Or More Characters Are The Opposite Sex From Canon**

 **LESSON 2**

* * *

"Oh — looks like we're back," said Harry, glancing up at the title and putting down his empty bottle of Butterbeer.

"That was a nice break," said Ronnie. "Good food, good company, and absolutely nothing of importance happened." She paused. "Actually, come to think of it, I _should_ have said that Fenrir Greyback appeared and we kicked his arse."

"That would just be trolling the readers," said Hermione firmly.

"Hey, yeah! The mountain troll from _Philosopher's Stone_ showed up to take revenge on us for —"

"Will you quit that?" Hermione turned to the readers with an apologetic expression. "Sorry about her. We were not attacked by werewolves or trolls, Voldemort did not show up, we didn't discover any kind of hidden treasure or evidence that Harry is really Lord Potter-Black or any other such nonsense. It really was just a break. We ate sandwiches and drank Butterbeer."

"And Luna stopped by to do a little interpretive dance."

 _"No,_ she didn't!"

"Oh," said Luna, looking disappointed. "I thought I did."

"No, you didn't — Luna, what are you doing here?" said Hermione, glaring at the narrative that suddenly and without any apparent reason apart from a cheap joke, had decided to insert the blonde Ravenclaw girl into the scene.

"Cameo appearance," said Luna. "Are you going to turn Harry into a girl in this chapter?"

"Er — yes, that was the plan."

Luna nodded sagely. Then, she dipped her hand into her robe pocket and pulled out a small spruce twig, which she gave to Harry. "You'd better take this, then. It wards off Rock-Clingers."

"Er... I'm almost afraid to ask," said Harry. "What are Rock-Clingers and what do they have to do with me becoming a girl?"

"Rock-Clingers are very cute, fuzzy little creatures who cling to rocks," said Luna. "They're pretty harmless, but they do tend to fall in love with the first girl they see, and then they start clinging to _her_ instead. And then they're almost impossible to get rid of."

"Er, okay."

"They don't like boys, you see, so boys are safe from them. But if you're going to be a girl, you should keep a spruce twig or two on you, because Rock-Clingers are allergic to spruce. If you carry a wand made of spruce, that's just as good, of course, but far as I know your wand is made of holly, so —"

"You mean to say," said Hermione, staring at Luna in disbelief, "that you always carry spruce twigs on you in case a Rock-Clinger should spot you?"

Luna looked back at her with an almost equal amount of disbelief. "You mean to say you _don't?"_

"Thanks, Luna, that's very kind of you!" said Harry hurriedly.

"Yeah," said Ronnie. "And, er, nice interpretive dance you did too."

"Thank you, Veronica!" Luna smiled brilliantly. "I'll leave you to the lecture now. Good luck being a girl, Harry!" And then, without any further comment, she stepped out of the narrative and was gone.

Hermione shook her head in exasperation. "That girl," she muttered, but strangely she did not continue the sentence. (Luna, who had been reading along, popped back in, in a paragraph, to say that she thought Hermione meant to say "That girl is completely right and I should listen to her more often.") "That was _not_ what I was going to say!" (Yes, it was.)

Ronnie sniggered, but Harry decided to cut in before this got any more confusing. "Didn't you have a lecture to continue, Hermione?"

"Yes. Lecture. Right." Hermione grabbed her wand and strode back up to the blackboard.

Harry and Ronnie took their seats again and settled down.

"So, to recap," said Hermione, "last chapter we talked about various reasons for writing a gender-flip fanfiction, we touched upon the differences between sex and gender, and the differences between a gender- _flip_ story and a gender- _change_ story. We also turned Ron into Ronnie, as an example of a gender-flipped character, we examined part of her story and background story to see in what ways she differed from her male counterpart."

"Speaking of which," said Harry. "I'm still not quite sure. _Is_ she Ron, or _isn't_ she?"

"Both, and neither," said Ronnie. "I _am_ Ron, and I'm _not_ Ron. I'm _me_ and I'm nobody else!"

"Thank you, I understood exactly none of that," said Harry.

"I did," said Ronnie cheerfully. "Maybe you will too, if you're lucky enough that it _Happens_ to you."

"That it _Happens_ to me?" Harry repeated. Taking extra care to pronounce the italics and capital letter didn't give that statement any more meaning. "What supposed to happen, I mean _Happen,_ to me?"

"Wouldn't wanna spoil the surprise," said Ronnie. "Or get your hopes up, for that matter. If it _Happens,_ you'll know it when it does. If it doesn't _Happen,_ then at least you're no worse off."

"You know," said Harry, "you used to make so much _sense_ back when you were a boy. Wait," he suddenly realised with a surge of panic, "this isn't about, er, you know, those... girl... periods... is it?"

Ronnie burst out laughing. She clutched the armrests of her chair, her body shaking as she howled with laughter. _"Girl — periods!"_ she squeaked in between the laughs. _"No!_ No, that's _not_ what I'm — _Bwa ha ha ha haaaaaa!"_

Harry looked at her with a mix of confusion, annoyance and worry. Which isn't altogether uncommon for a boy to feel when a girl is laughing at something he doesn't understand and he has the sneaking suspicion it's him.

He turned to look at Hermione, who merely looked annoyed. _"Honestly,"_ she huffed when she met Harry's eyes. "Now she's just being _childish_. Then again, canon Ron was frequently extremely childish, too, so at least that hasn't changed."

"But what is she talking about? What's this about something that I'll be lucky if _Happens_ to me?"

"I can tell you straight away that it has nothing to do with, er, you know, _monthlies_ ," said Hermione, as Ronnie howled with laughter again. "I don't think I'd say that's something you're _lucky_ to get."

"Well, then _what?"_

Hermione sighed. "We'll get to that when we get to it, all right? To answer your first question, it's simple. As a gender-flipped character, she isn't the _same_ as Ron in canon, but she _does_ have approximately his role and family relations. She's Ron, as one fanfic author believes Ron could have been if he'd been born a girl."

"So in the author's opinion, if Ron was born a girl he'd say thing that don't make sense and then just about die laughing about them." Harry shook his head. "I'm not quite sure I agree with that interpretation."

"Well, you said it right there: _Interpretation,"_ said Hermione. "In the end, all any fanfiction author can do is present his or her _interpretations_ of the canon characters, and hope that they're approximately close to the characters as they are in canon. Or at least close enough that the readers will recognise them. Even you and I, here and now, are just this author's interpretations of our characters. Slightly liberal, I might add, since our vocabularies and our knowledge of pop culture, fanfiction and storytelling tropes have been expanded a little as compared to canon, so we can better make the points the authors needs us to make."

"Isn't that going to put some readers off?" said Harry.

"Possibly. What one fanfic writer thinks is a perfectly valid interpretation of a character, might very well cause another fanfic writer, or reader to shout ' _OOC'!"_

Ronnie, still a little red-faced and breathing heavily after her laughing fit, piped in with "Why'd they shout _'Ook'?_ Is this a _Discworld_ crossover or what?"

"I _very clearly_ said OOC," said Hermione, glaring at her. "Oe-Oe-See. Out Of Character."

"Oh... right." Ronnie had calmed down now, and she frowned slightly. "But if it's like that, then _anyone_ can write _any_ of us in _any_ way they like, and they can defend it by saying _'oh, it's just my interpretation of them'!"_

"Really?" Hermione smiled — an uncharacteristically wicked smile. "Okay, Ronnie. So, say someone was to write a story in which I, like, started talking like an air-headed American Valley Girl and, like, totally didn't wanna study 'cause that's just, like, soooooo dull..." Her smile turned vapid and most un-Hermione-like, and her accent turned vaguely Californian. "That'd be, like, totally cool, then."

"..." said Ronnie, somehow managing to pronounce three dots after one another.

Hermione pulled a stick of pink bubblegum out of nowhere and popped it into her mouth, beginning to chew nonchalantly. "And if I, like, begin wearing little belly shirts and turn my hair blonde because, like, that's so much cuter than brown..." She paused to blow a bubble that grew to almost the size of her head before it popped. "That's _so_ me, right? And Hermione's just like sooo hard to spell, so my name should be Mya instead, right?"

Harry didn't know whether to laugh or just stare, or feel slightly vindicated that Hermione seemed to be making Ronnie feel as flustered as Ronnie had made _him_ feel. "Er... Hermione, don't you think..." he began.

"As if!" Mya, alias Hermione, sneered. "You're just jealous because I'm gonna score myself the cutest boyfriend ever. That Draco's, like, sooooo totally dreamy."

"Sick bucket. _Now."_ Ronnie demanded. And since this was still the Room of Requirement, a large bucket immediately appeared in her hand.

"Right," said Hermione, suddenly back to her normal voice and accent, the gum suddenly gone without a trace. "So you agree that would be plain bad characterisation?"

"Yes! Anything you say!" Ronnie clutched her (thankfully empty) bucket. "Just never do that again!"

Hermione nodded in satisfaction and winked to Harry. Then, she picked her wand up. "Good! So, after that little departure, let's continue with our real topic here: Gender-flipped characters."

"Yes! Good idea!" said Ronnie, eager to take the topic far away from Valley Girl Hermione. "Time to make Harry a girl!"

Hermione nodded. "Harry, are you ready?"

Harry felt a surge of nervousness pass through him. What would he be like as a girl? Would he suddenly begin not making sense the way Ronnie had? He shook his head. "Not really, to be honest."

"Don't worry, it doesn't hurt," said Ronnie as she put her bucket down, and it vanished into obscurity, never to be mentioned by the narrative again. "Feels weird at first, but then it just feels... _normal."_

"Well, _your_ change was a little easier that Harry's is going to be," Hermione admitted. "Like I said, you were the preview; you were already an established character of our author's. We didn't have to think about how you were going to turn out. But with Harry, we don't have an established female version to work towards."

"Can't we just... snatch one from one of the other fanfics on this site, instead of changing me?" said Harry. "Not like there's a lack of Fem!Harry stories out there."

"That would defy the purpose of doing this to begin with," said Hermione. "It's _good_ that we don't have an established Fem!Harry! That means we have to create one, and _that_ means we can demonstrate some of the thought and work that has to go into a gender-flipped character."

Harry sighed, "Oh, all right. Let's get this over with."

"Oh, you'll be fine," said Hermione. "Ronnie's right about one thing, it really doesn't hurt." She lifted her wand and pointed it at Harry.

"Right, see you on the other side!" said Ronnie cheerfully.

"So, for a non-canon variant on the already non-canon spell: _Lenta Puella Transmutatio!"_

Harry saw the flash of pink light follow the bad Latin, and a shocked sensation surged though his body. It wasn't painful, not really, it was more like getting a bucket of ice water dumped on his head and then suddenly realising that the ice-cold sensation vanished almost before he registered it, just leaving him oddly numb.

For a few brief seconds, there were vague, if dulled, sensations all over his body; he could feel things shift and rearrange themselves in ways that should be painful, but weren't — in fact, it was a lot like the morphing process in those _Animorphs_ books was described, if not nearly as radical. He wasn't turning into an animal, he was just turning into a girl...

Then, all of a sudden, certainty set in. He _was_ a girl. _She_ was a girl. She had always been a girl, ever since the day she was born. She knew this in her heart — just like she'd previously known she'd always been a boy. Now she knew exactly how Ronnie had felt, and why she hadn't panicked — the spell didn't give you _time_ to panic. Despite the the fact that the change took three paragraphs, giving the illusion that it lasted for much longer than it really did, the entire thing had only taken a few seconds. By the time her brain got the idea that it might be a good idea to panic, it had already settled and accepted everything as normal.

So. She was a girl, then. Odd, though, her body didn't seem quite itself — even odder, she wasn't quite sure what it _should_ feel like. She felt... oddly floaty...

"Oy!" Next to her, Ronnie shielded her eyes. "Bloody hell, Hermione, what did you _do?!_ I get that he's a girl — I mean, _she's_ a girl now, but... I'm looking right at her, and I can't see what she _looks_ like!"

"That's because we haven't _decided_ what she looks like yet," said Hermione. "We've only just started the creation process."

"That's nonsense. I know what I look like! I look like... I look sort of like my..." Harry paused. It was dawning on her that she couldn't actually remember what she looked like. She knew what she had looked like when she was a boy; she could perfectly recall the skinny, black-haired boy with the round glasses. But what was she like as a girl? She couldn't even remember if she still wore glasses or not!

She looked down herself, and now she really _did_ feel weirded out, even if the spell still seemed to be keeping her from outright panic: She was just a blurry, shapeless blob, and at the same time she had a fully-formed female body that kept changing what it looked like. It didn't make any sense at all and made her eyes hurt.

Even Hermione was averting her eyes and avoiding looking directly at Harry. "We just need to decide on her basic looks. Doesn't have to be a long description... In fact, it's better if it isn't, because lengthy descriptions of appearances gets boring. Broad strokes, the readers will fill in the details themselves."

"So what _do_ I look like?" said Harry, eager to get a body with some actual substance again.

"All right, let's see..." Still not looking at Harry, Hermione turned to the blackboard. "There are many variations, but Fem!Harry usually takes on one of two forms. One is heavily based on canon Harry's appearance; Small, slender, black hair, glasses, the works. This version is, for obvious reasons, favoured by fan artists. She resembles Harry, but is clearly a girl."

She tapped the blackboard with her wand, and an animated picture formed on the smooth surface, slightly crudely drawn but easily identifiable as a girl with glasses and black hair. The lightning-shaped scar on her forehead identified her as Harry.

"The other commonly-accepted form, more suited to a story format," Hermione went on, "is an inversion of Harry's canonical looks. Since Harry as a boy looks like his father, except with his mother's eyes, this Fem!Harry looks like her mother and has either her father's eyes, or her father's hair. To make her more visually distinct, we'll display the one with her father's eyes."

Once again, she tapped the blackboard, and the black-haired girl was joined by a pretty, red-haired one with no glasses, but with the same lightning-bolt scar. The two girls stared at one another, as if uncertain what to make of each other.

"There are other variants," said Hermione, "but like I said, these two are the most common. Some Fem!Harry variants are impossibly beautiful, but I'd be careful about getting too carried away there; it tends to make the readers just roll their eyes and make Mary Sue accusations. Any preferences, Harry?"

"We could make her a green-skinned alien girl from the planet Wongo who —"

 _"No,_ Ronnie!"

"I'll be the black-haired girl, if you don't mind!" said Harry hurriedly.

On the blackboard, the black-haired girl punched the air in triumph, while the red-haired girl gave Harry a dirty look.

"Er, sorry," said Harry, not certain why she was apologising to a drawing. "But girl or not, I just don't think I'd feel like _me_ if I looked like you. Especially without my glasses, they're like my trademark..."

The red-haired girl glowered. Then, she clenched her fists and marched right out of the frame, vanishing from sight. The black-haired girl just shrugged, and then motioned towards Harry.

And Harry felt her body shake and solidify, and all of a sudden she remembered what she looked like. Once again, the knowledge was just there; she remembered looking at herself in a mirror and seeing the black-haired, green-eyed bespectacled girl look back at her. She looked down at herself, this time seeing a clearly defined body; small and slender, just like she now remembered it had always been. She even felt the familiar glasses resting on her nose.

Ronnie breathed a sigh in relief. "All right, we know what you look like," she said. "How d'you feel, Harry?"

"Fine," said Harry, discovering to her surprise that she meant it. "You were right, now it just feels normal to be this way. Like I've always been a girl." She blinked, then frowned. "Was this what you were laughing about earlier, the thing that was supposed to _Happen?"_

"Huh? Oh, that. Nah, that's not it. It wouldn't _Happen_ straight away, anyway," said Ronnie. "You'll know when it does, trust me. Hey — look!" She suddenly changed the subject by pointing towards the blackboard.

The drawing of the black-haired Fem!Harry had changed. It was less crudely-drawn and more detailed, and it was mimicking Harry's movements exactly. It was like looking in a mirror, if the mirror for some reason showed you with coloured chalk outlines.

Harry experimentally lifted her arm to wave about, and the drawing did the same. She lifted her other hand to adjust her glasses, and the drawing mimicked her perfectly.

"She's become me," said Harry, watching the drawing's lips move in perfect unison with hers. "Or possibly, I've become her."

"That is so cool," said Ronnie. "If a little creepy."

Hermione tapped the blackboard with her wand, and the drawing faded. "Appearance, check," she said, "Next thing we need to establish is your name."

"My name?" said Harry, blinking. "Harry, of course!"

"Since you're a girl, it probably isn't," said Hermione.

"There are girls named Harry!" Harry insisted.

"Well, yes, but it's not common," said Hermione. "For clarity's sake, you're better off with a different name. It'll help establish you as different from the boy you are in canon. _And_ it'll help establish some points about naming a gender-flipped character."

"What do you mean?" said Harry.

"Well... You know how in canon, our names are usually symbolic of something?"

"Like a werewolf named _Remus Lupin?"_ said Harry.

"Yes, but usually more subtle than that. Take my name, for instance: Hermione Granger. 'Hermione' is a Shakespearian name, and it has ties to Greek myths. It's led out from 'Hermes,' the messenger of the gods... as well as the god of wit, eloquence and quick thinking. The name paints me as a brainy, somewhat dignified character, as well as someone whose parents are highly-read."

"Weren't you named 'Hermione' because it's an unusual name and Jo didn't want a lot of studious young girls to be teased at school for having the same name as you, if the book ever got published?" Ronnie shot in.

"Technically, yes," Hermione admitted. "But that doesn't mean the symbolism isn't there, or the fact that it is the sort of name two well-read dentists might give their daughter. Besides, when I'm Petrified in _Chamber of Secrets,_ that's a clear reference to the Shakespearian Hermione, who was turned into a statue, but then restored."

"Er, right," said Ronnie, who had never seen a Shakespeare play in her life, because even in a metafictional story like this, making her an expert on Shakespeare really _would_ be OOC.

"But," Hermione went on, "if you look at my surname, 'Granger' — that's another word for 'farmer.' A commoner's name. This illustrates my Muggle roots. And that's the sort of thought that goes into a character name in our franchise. Let's look at Harry's canon name."

She turned to the blackboard and tapped it with her wand again. The words _HARRY JAMES POTTER_ appeared, in capital letters and nicely underlined.

 _"Harry James Potter,"_ said Hermione. "Now, 'Potter' is a very common English surname, of course referring to the occupation of making pottery. Both 'Harry' and 'James' are interesting here; they're both very common names, yet names with strong regal ties. 'Harry' especially, as it's the both the diminutive of 'Harold' (a name that has been shared by several kings) and the Middle English form of the name 'Henry,' which again is derived from the Germanic 'Heinrich' which means — Ronnie, I know you're not really asleep, quit pretending."

Ronnie stopped snoring and opened her eyes. "All right. But Hermione, is all this really necessary? Nobody cares! _I_ didn't have this much thought put into _my_ name! I was just called 'Veronica' because that meant I could still be nicknamed 'Ron' or Ronnie'!"

"Actually," Hermione said triumphantly. "the name Veronica means 'true image' or 'bearer of victory.' You're fundamentally honest and hopefully you'll help bring about victory against Voldemort. And of course, there's the Arthurian legend ties that's shared by all the Weasleys, as 'Ron' was the name of King Arthur's lance."

Ronnie blinked, then threw up her hands. "All right, fine, I give in. You're a bloody lexicon. I just didn't think we needed to be this particular about a name, that's all."

"Names are important, especially in our franchise, that's what I've been trying to say all along," said Hermione. "As I was about to say, Harry's canon name indicates a strong ruler or leader, but perhaps most importantly, the fact that the names are so common and ordinary highlights his status as an 'everyman' character.",

Harry shook her head. "It's all a lot to consider for a name," she said.

"We can make it simpler," said Hermione generously, "and approach it from an in-universe point of view. "Looking at your canon name, a very common name... what sort of name would your parents have given you if you were born a girl?"

"Er..." In truth, Harry had no idea. She'd always been just... Harry. Just because she was _Fem!Harry_ now, it didn't mean she wasn't still _Harry_.

"How about _'Pippin Galadriel Moonchild'?"_ Ronnie giggled.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "That's not funny. I doubt Harry's parents ever read _The Lord of the Rings._ Or _The Neverending Story._ Or, for that matter, _Good Omens,_ which was clearly what you were referencing here."

"They _could_ have," said Ronnie. "Her Mum was Muggle-born, remember? Maybe she was a Terry Pratchett fan!"

 _"_ _Good Omens_ didn't come out until 1990, when Harry was already ten years old!" Hermione snapped. "But even if we change the timeline so that she was born later, or claim it was a reference to the other two books — the fact remains that Lily Potter would _not_ have named her daughter _Pippin Galadriel Moonchild!"_

"But if she _had_ ," said Ronnie, refusing to give in, "Pippin Galadriel Moonchild could do like the girl in _Good Omens_ and insist on being called _'Pepper'!_ Then we'd get _Pepper Potter!"_

"That's a horrible pun, and an even more horrible reference to the _Iron Man_ character," said Hermione. "I know you're not being serious, but you're falling into the same trap that countless fanfic writers have, by giving Fem!Harry a completely ludicrous name which there's no way her parents would have given her. Nobody takes those Fem!Harrys seriously."

"All right, all right," said Ronnie, sinking back a little.

"Harry, do you have any ideas yet?" said Hermione. "Just choose a name that it's at least vaguely plausible that Lily and James would have named you. They'd have chosen a common name, at least."

Harry shook her head. "I don't really know. I'm so used to 'Harry.' I can't really think of anything else."

"Okay, how about Harriet?" said Hermione. " _'Harriet Lily Potter'_ is the most commonly-used name for Fem!Harrys.

"Mmm... I can see why, but I don't really think I like it," said Harry. "It's a bit of a posh name, isn't it? A little too stylish and upscale for my tastes."

"In that case, if you need ideas," said Hermione, "you could go with a flower motif. Since your Mum and Aunt were named 'Lily' and 'Petunia,' giving you a flower name would fit."

Harry tried to think of a flower, and the first one she came up with was "Rose? Rose Potter?"

"Like Rose Weasley, you mean? That could..." Hermione began, but was interrupted by a suddenly intrusive and somewhat unpleasant paragraph in all italics:

 _Flashing images of a certain very infamous series of fanfics that shall remain nameless here, but includes much plagiarism, disturbing amounts of nudism and underage sex, an overpowered and unintentionally sociopathic fem!Harry who was both an unrealistic martial artist and a member of an extremely violent and very hypocritical sect of druids..._

They blinked as the text returned to normal again, and a collective shudder went through them all.

"On second thought, I think that name's been ruined," said Harry. "Nobody's going to want another Rose Potter."

"We can't discard every name just because some terrible fanfic has used it," said Hermione. "If we do, we'll never find any good names."

"Still. Not Rose." Harry scanned through her brain for another flower name, and found one. "How about _Holly_ , like my wand? That's a fairly common name, it's a flower — or at least a tree — and it sounds vaguely like Harry."

"Holly. Holly Potter." Hermione murmured. "Well, there's been a couple of awful Fem!Harrys with that name too, of course, but on the whole... Short and simple, and in Celtic lore the holly tree is the counterpart of the oak tree, being the King of the Forest during from the summer to the winter solstice. It stands for protection and strength. Poisonous berries, of course, but then I wouldn't recommend eating a lily either. Yes, all in all, that seems like a good name."

"Holly it is," said Holly, suddenly remembering that that was indeed her name. "And since 'Holly Lily' sounds stupid, my middle name is... Jane."

"I thought that was Hermione's middle name," said Ronnie.

"No, my middle name is 'Jean,'" said Hermione. "It was _supposed_ to be Jane, but Jo decided she didn't want me to share a middle name with Umbridge, so she changed it to Jean."

"Oh, right... Dolores _Jane_ Umbridge." Holly felt some of her enthusiasm for the name dwindle. She'd kind of wanted her middle name to reflect her father's name since the plant motif already reflected her mother's, and 'Jane' sounded comfortably like 'James' while still being suitably feminine. Was there any other alternative?

 _Jamie?_ No. _Jemma? Jade?_ Too peculiar. _Jasmine?_ No, that would be two flower names next to one another. _Jaqueline?_

"We've already used that last one," said Ronnie, once again responding to things that had only been said in the narrative. "Last chapter. My transgender cousin, remember?"

"Oh yeah..."

"Wasn't she just a throwaway character invented on the spur to briefly discuss the topic of transgenderism?" said Hermione.

"Doesn't mean we shouldn't consider her feelings!"

"You know what? I'm sticking with Jane," said Holly. "It fits well with 'Holly' and who cares what Umbridge's middle name is, anyway? Even Voldemort shares a first name with Tom the barman!"

"All right." Hermione tapped the blackboard and the words _HARRY JAMES POTTER_ shifted and rearranged themselves to read _HOLLY JANE POTTER_ , keeping the nice underline.

Holly nodded. It looked good, she thought, as the memories rushed in and she suddenly knew that Jane had always been her middle name. Not that she really used it all that much, but it was still nice to know.

"Whew," said Ronnie. "Does that mean we're done talking about the name?"

"I think so," said Hermione. "Unless either of you have something to add?"

Holly shrugged. "I'm satisfied," she said.

"Well, let's get onto the real fun, then!" Hermione rubbed her hands together. _"Backstory!_ What was your childhood like?"

"I thought we could just keep it simple, and I'd keep my canon childhood and backstory," said Holly. "Boy who — well, _Girl_ Who Lived, and all that."

"We could do that," said Hermione, though not very enthusiastically. "Do you think it would all be the same, though? Horrible Dursleys, having to sleep in a cupboard, doing all the chores, all that sort of thing? Remember, you're a girl now. Society might frown on a _boy_ being mistreated by terrible relatives, but a _girl_ being mistreated by terrible relatives... well, people get a little _extra_ upset at that, don't they?"

"Didn't stop all those Cinderella stories and modern re-tellings," said Holly. "I don't know, Hermione... Somehow I doubt the Dursleys would cut me any more slack just because I'm a girl. Aunt Petunia might even get nastier because I'd remind her even more of my Mum."

"Or she could treat you better as a way of reconciling with your Mum," said Hermione.

 _"Aunt Petunia?!_ I doubt it."

"And your cousin very likely wouldn't be encouraged to punch you."

"You don't really get what the Dursleys are like, do you?"

"Basically? They're grotesque, exaggerated caricatures that wouldn't be out of place in a Roald Dahl book," said Hermione. "Their main role is to be horrible to you so that your time at Hogwarts comes as an escape, but also to basically be horrible in such a buffoonish way that they never actually come across as actual serious threats to you."

"Er," said Holly. "Well, I suppose I was never actually _afraid_ of them, but you know, there are a few fans who would disagree with you on that last bit."

"Yes," Hermione admitted. "And what heated online debates there are on that. But let's not get too caught up in that particular argument right now, or we'll never finish this lecture. My point was that if the Dursleys are to play central roles in your backstory, we need to examine if and how you being a girl changes your relationship with them."

"Well..." Holly thought about it. "Probably I'd still be overworked and neglected, but I suppose they at least might let me off from wearing Dudley's hand-me-downs," she finally said. "Aunt Petunia, being all about appearances, would probably make certain I wore proper 'girly' clothes. Skirts and blouses and dresses. Bought in second-hand shops and at flea-markets, of course, because there's no way she'd spend any more money on me than she _had_ to." At this point, Holly stopped talking because she'd glanced down at the next paragraph and saw that Ronnie was about to interrupt her.

"Y'know!" Ronnie interrupted her. "Here's a radical idea. Maybe you _don't_ live with the Dursleys!"

"Blood protection," said Holly. "That wouldn't have changed just because I'm a girl."

"That's just it — what if you're not the Girl Who Lived at all? That bloody prophecy talked about a _boy_ , didn't it? 'The Dark Lord will mark _him_ _—_ not _her —_ as his equal, but _he_ _—_ not _she —_ will have power the Dark Lord knows not,' and so forth. So either the prophecy has to change a few important gender pronouns, or..."

"Or it's no longer going to be about me, you mean?" Holly blinked.

"Exactly! You're disqualified on account of being a girl!"

"What a sexist prophecy."

"But it'd mean you wouldn't have to live with the Dursleys," Ronnie goaded.

Holly had to admit that the prospect did have some merit, but — "No. It wouldn't work."

"Why not?"

"Because if the prophecy's not about me, it's about Neville."

"So? There's loads of _'Neville is the Boy Who Lived'_ stories out there! Well, a fair few, anyway. This one would just be combined with being a Fem!Harry story."

"Okay, look," said Holly. "Not saying Neville wouldn't be up to the task. He definitely would, we know he's much stronger than most people think. And his Mum would probably sacrifice herself for him too, so no problem there."

"So what _is_ the problem?"

"The problem is that Alice Longbottom's sacrifice wouldn't make Voldemort's Killing Curse rebound on itself. The only reason it worked for _my_ Mum was because Voldemort was willing to spare her, remember? Because of Snape and all that? We know the sacrifice thing doesn't work if Voldemort was going to kill you _anyway_ , or my Dad's sacrifice just minutes before would have done the trick."

Ronnie paused, but only for a second. "So we just need to find a reason why You-Know-Who would have planned to spare Alice Longbottom!"

"This isn't canon, Ronnie," said Hermione. "You can say 'Voldemort' here."

"Yeah, well, it's not too hard to find a reason! Alice Longbottom was pure-blood, right? And remember when You-Know-Wh— all right, _Voldemort,_ spoke to Neville at the Battle of Hogwarts? _Yo_ _u show spirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock."_ (That was actually a pretty good imitation of Voldemort's hissing, raspy voice, Holly thought.) "He could have said something similar to Neville's Mum, given her a chance to survive, and then she refused —!"

"That sounds a little flimsy. Not to say stupid." But Holly couldn't help the little smile she felt spreading on her lips. "I have to admit, though, Voldemort's pure-blood obsession doing him in... There _is_ a certain dramatic irony in it."

"See, it works! We can probably refine or reword it a little so it sounds less stupid." Ronnie looked positively giddy. "Point is, _Neville_ becomes the Boy Who Lived, and _you_ get to grow up with your parents!"

Holly nodded, but then a creepy suspicion er, crept up on her. "Unless there's an ironic twist, and Bellatrix decides to torture _them_ after Neville's parents have been killed, of course. Just to make the role swap between the two of us complete. And then — they wouldn't be dead, but they'd be in St. Mungos, and still not be able to take care of me."

Ronnie's face fell. "Yeah... That sounds just like what the universe would do to you," she admitted. But then she brightened again."But! Even then, there wouldn't be any blood protection because You-Know-Who... I mean _Voldemort_ never tried to kill you, and so there wouldn't be any reason for you to live with the Dursleys!"

"Apart from the fact that they're my closest living relatives?"

"Who cares about that! Sirius would take you, of course! He's your godfather, he'd take you in, he offered to do it in canon! And since You-Know-Voldemort never went after you, there wouldn't be a Fidelius Charm, so there wouldn't be a betrayal, or at least not of that kind, and Sirius wouldn't end up in Azkaban, and you'd grow up in the wizarding world!"

"Hello?" said Hermione. "Could I interrupt you here?"

Holly and Ronnie both turned to look at her. "What's the matter?" said Ronnie. "I thought you _wanted_ changes to Holly's backstory."

"Yes, but these changes might be a little bigger than I had in mind," Hermione admitted. "Holly _not_ being the Girl Who Lived? And what about poor Neville?"

"He'd be fine," said Ronnie. "Neville's tough. And he'd still be able to live with his Gran. And when he came to Hogwarts and ended up having to fight Voldemort, we'd all help him, wouldn't we?"

Hermione opened her mouth to retort, but then apparently thought better of it. Instead she sighed and shook her head. "I suppose it's no worse than some of those fanfics out there," she said. "All right."

And then she tapped the blackboard with her wand again, twice. For each tap, a new phrase formed:

 _\- NOT THE GIRL WHO LIVED  
\- RAISED BY SIRIUS BLACK_

"Of course, Holly," said Hermione, "if you're not the Girl Who Lived, that means you don't have that scar." She tapped the blackboard again, and another phrase appeared:

\- _NO COOL SCAR._

Hermione blinked. "That's odd," she said. "I meant to only write _'no scar.'_ I don't know where the _'cool'_ part came from."

"I always did think the scar looked sort of cool," Holly admitted. "Back when I was a boy, it was one of the few things I liked about my appearance."

"Well, you don't have it now," said Ronnie.

Holly's hand went up to touch her forehead. It was smooth and unblemished, no scar to be felt at all. And just at she thought that, she remembered without a doubt that she'd never had a scar. Vague memories began seeping into her head; growing up with Sirius, visits by Remus Lupin, hearing bedtime stories about the Marauders' antics at Hogwarts...

"So," she said. "I'm not the Girl Who Lived."

"But you were still affected by the war and by Voldemort, since you still had to grow up without your parents," said Hermione.

"What about Wormtail?" Holly suddenly remembered.

"Obviously, he still spied for Voldemort, since that wouldn't change just because you're a girl," said Hermione. "I wouldn't be surprised if he ran off and hid as a rat, just like in canon, to escape Azkaban. Or maybe he pretended to be under the Imperius curse like the Malfoys. Or," she added, "maybe he _did_ end up in Azkaban."

"Oh, and you know what I realised?" Ronnie's eyes widened. "Snape wouldn't be teaching at Hogwarts! The only reason he went to Dumbledore in the first place was because You-Know-Voldemort was after Lily! In this story, Holly wasn't a target, so Lily wasn't in danger, so Snape never changed sides! He'd be in Azkaban too, wouldn't he, as a Death Eater!"

"That'll have done wonders for his disposition," said Holly. "Maybe he even died... No. No, he's not the type. Besides, it would be a waste if he did, he could play a role in the story.."

"He could hate Bellatrix for torturing your Mum, and end up killing her at the end!" Ronnie's voice lowered dramatically. "Just imagine it: Bellatrix has escaped from Azkaban, she's towering over you, ready to kill you, Holly... and then, all of a sudden, she's hit by a Killing Curse from behind, and there's Snape, who glares at you with pure loathing and says _'I didn't do this for_ _ **you,**_ _Potter.'_ " (That was a pretty good imitation of Snape's spiteful tone.) "And then he kills himself, right in front of your eyes, and next thing you know, you can see Thestrals."

Holly and Hermione looked at her.

"That got a bit... dark," said Holly.

Ronnie shrugged. "Yeah, but the story's not gonna be all sunshine and rainbows and puppies just because you had a happier childhood, is it? Unless you wanna make it a pure fix-fic where everything turns out better than canon."

Holly shook her head. "I'd love for everything to be better than in canon, with everyone happy and nothing bad happening ever, but that wouldn't make for a very good story. About the only thing we could do with a story like that would be...I don't know, me getting together with Neville or something, and it turns into one of those really trashy Harlequin-style romances."

"Oooh, with unrealistic sex scenes and everything?" said Ronnie.

"Probably."

Hermione cleared her throat. "Before we go down that road," she said, "I think that's enough on the backstory for now, otherwise we end up telling the entire story."

"Aw, it was just getting interesting," Ronnie complained. "Much more fun than discussing name origins!"

"Yes, but we still haven't finished creating Holly as a character," said Hermione. "We've got a solid basis, but we haven't decided on things like what her personality really is, if she has the same interests, skills and hobbies as canon Harry does, what her sexuality is —"

"Sexuality?" Holly shook her head. "I know I talked about trashy romance stories with unrealistic sex scenes, but I was joking. I really don't think this should be an adult-rated story."

"Gender-flip stories usually bring up the prospect of romance," said Hermione, "And if we're going to discuss your love interest, we need to at least touch on your sexuality. Let's say you _do_ get together with Neville; that means you're attracted to boys on at least some level. There's nothing adult-rated about that. And really, alternate sexualities aren't adult-rated in and of themselves, despite what some censors might say."

Ronnie shrugged. "Do we have to establish Holly's sexuality right away? I'm currently on my second story and I still have no idea what _my_ sexuality is supposed to be."

"What do you _mean_ , you don't know what your sexuality is supposed to be?"

"It hasn't come up in my story yet," said Ronnie. "Given my annoyance with romance in _Weasley Girl: Secrets of the Past,_ and the fact that I'm not drooling over Lockhart like certain _other_ girls in school —" (Hermione inserted herself in a paranthesis here to scowl at Ronnie for that one) "— maybe I'm a lesbian. The thought _has_ occurred to me. Hell, maybe I'm just asexual."

Hermione looked dubious. "Asexual, you? With all the sex references you make? At the age of _twelve_ , I might add?"

"You can be asexual and still make sex jokes! And I don't make _that_ many," Ronnie defended herself. "Mostly I just say 'arse.'"

"I've noticed that," said Hermione dryly.

"Besides, when I do make silly sex references, it's _because_ I'm twelve! Twelve-year-olds make sex references all the time and think it's hilarious! They're not supposed to be mature about that sort of thing!"

Hermione huffed. _"I_ never did anything like that. For that matter, neither did _you_ , in canon."

 _"Uranus,"_ said Ronnie with a smirk. "And I seem to remember you getting really giggly about that bloke who liked a _'healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks'_ —"

Hermione blushed. "We were _fourteen_ in that particular book, not _twelve_. And _I_ never claimed to be asexual."

"I just said _maybe_ I was!"

"I'll just be bisexual, all right?" Holly shouted. "That way I can swing either way and we don't have to take gender into equation when and if deciding on a love interest! Now can we _please_ move on?!"

Hermione rubbed her forehead and tapped the blackboard with her wand. The word _BISEXUAL_ was added to the list. "We're going to be accused of pandering to horny teenage boys, I just know it."

"I don't care, as long as I _don't_ get together with Draco Malfoy," said Holly. "I can take Neville, he's a sweet boy... And if he's the Boy Who Lived and I'm his girlfriend, it means I still get to be heavily involved in the fight against Voldemort."

"Unless he breaks up with you for your own good, like you — like canon Harry did with Ginny," said Ronnie.

"He wouldn't do that!" said Holly. "Would he?" She frowned, then looked at Ronnie. "If he does, maybe I'll just get together with _you_ instead."

"Me?" Ronnie blinked. "You mean the male me?"

"No, I mean _you_ you. Girl you. Fem!Ron. Veronica Weasley. That you. I'm bisexual, remember? Besides, didn't you say that the readers of _Weasley Girl_ wanted us to get together?"

"Me and _Harry_ , yeah."

"But I _am_ Harry," said Holly with an innocent smile. "I'm Fem!Harry."

"Oh yeah!" Ronnie's smile turned wicked. "You know, since we both _are_ and _aren't_ Harry and Ron, I keep getting confused about that sort of thing."

"You two are absolutely horrid," Hermione declared. "Ronnie, who even says you're a girl in this story?"

"Who says I'm _not?"_ said Ronnie. "I'm a girl right now, aren't I? And you were the one who said I needed a sexuality, and refused to believe that I'm asexual, so I might as well be a lesbian. Or at least I might be one in this alternate universe."

"We're _definitely_ going to be accused of pandering to horny male teenagers," Hermione groaned. "All right, let's add both Neville and Ronnie as _potential_ love interests. I'll stay out of it, if you don't mind; I'm _definitely_ not attracted to girls."

She tapped her wand three times against the blackboard, and a new list appeared beside the old one:

 _POTENTIAL LOVE INTERESTS:_

 _\- NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM  
\- VERONICA WEASLEY  
\- THE MOUNTAIN TROLL FROM "PHILOSOPHER'S STONE"_

Holly and Ronnie both gaped as the last point on the list formed. _"Hermione!"_ they both said in shocked unison, Holly feeling a surge of annoyance.

Hermione stared at the blackboard, then at her own wand. "I — didn't mean to add that last one!" she said, sounding about as shocked as Holly felt. "Sorry! I don't think it's a good idea to pair you up with a troll, Holly, honest! There must be something wrong with this board!" She hit the blackboard hard with her wand, and the offending phrase disappeared.

"Let's — let's just move on, shall we?" she said, flustered. "We still need to determine your personality, interests..."

Harriet nodded. The blackboard really must be broken, Hermione wouldn't have written anything like that on purpose. Deciding to forget it, she said: "Since I was raised by Sirius I'm probably more cheerful and upbeat. Maybe a little wilder and cheekier? I can see him encouraging me to live more on the wild side."

"Or he could get overprotective instead since you're a girl, and all he has left of his best friend," said Hermione, having managed to return to her normal voice again.

"I doubt it. He doesn't really seem the type to be overprotective."

"Correction: The Sirius we know from _canon_ doesn't seem the type," said Hermione. "But he'd spent over a decade in Azkaban and basically had no emotional development all that time. _This_ Sirius might have developed a little differently."

"I suppose," said Holly slowly. "But he'd still be _Sirius_ , you know? How about a compromise then: He is slightly overprotective, but in such a way that instead of rushing to defend me from all dangers, he teaches me Knockback Jinxes and Knee-Reversal Hexes and the like, so I can fend off any 'pushy boys' myself!"

"What about the Bat-Bogey Hex?" said Ronnie.

"That's Ginny's trademark. Wouldn't want to infringe on her."

"That could work," Hermione agreed. "Though, despite all the fanfics around where you grow up with your father or Sirius, and turn into an arrogant prankster as a result... I don't really think you'd be _that_ much wilder. I mean, in canon you were raised by the Dursleys, who must have been some of the lousiest role models ever, and you turned out all right, didn't you?"

Holly had to smile, a little, at that. "All right, but I'm keeping my sarcastic sense of humour. Too many fanfic authors forget about it."

"Right. We wouldn't want to deprive you of the ability to annoy people who really should not be annoyed, after all," said Hermione. "Interests? Hobbies?"

"I'm still small and light, so I still have a good build to be a Seeker. Besides, I bet I'd be a _killer_ Quidditch player if I'd been allowed to practice broomstick flying all my life!"

"Careful there, Holly," said Ronnie. "Don't fall for the temptation to make yourself better than canon Harry in every way. That just screams _'look how much better I am than that loser over in canon,'_ and that'll just end up annoying readers. Well, readers who have any sense of _taste_ , anyway."

"I have to stay recognisable!" Holly protested. "Canon Harry is famous for his broomstick skills, and since I don't have the scar, or the role as Girl Who Lived, some things have to stay the same. Otherwise, I'm not even Fem!Harry, I'm just some original character."

"Good point, but I'm just saying," said Ronnie. "Take it from a gender-flipped character who's already gone through all this!"

Holly sighed. "All right, since you're so _experienced_ at this, what do you suggest?"

"Glad you asked! Hermione, may I?"

Hermione looked at her, slightly annoyed. "Why?"

"Because," said Ronnie, lowering her voice dramatically. "I think it's about to _Happen_ to her. She's starting to display the signs."

"Oh?" Hermione looked at Holly, then blinked. "Oh!"

"What are you talking about?" said Holly, annoyed. "What signs? What is about to _HAPpen?"_ She over-pronounced the word on purpose.

"You'll see, you'll see!" Ronnie looked positively giddy as she stepped up beside Hermione. "If I'm not mistaken, if we continue along this path, you'll see! Don't worry, it's good! It's a good thing, you'll like it! I remember when it _Happened_ to me..."

"You're rambling," said Hermione.

"Eh? Oh, sorry." Ronnie pulled herself together, flipped her long hair back and struck a very Hermione-like pose. "Right then! Tip number one — oh, wait, hang on." She fished her wand out of her robe pocket and tapped the blackboard. "Tip number one — wait, what?"

The "wait, what?" was in response to the text that formed on the blackboard, which read _POOR FEMALE IMITATION OF A BAD MALE CHARACTER,_ with an arrow pointing directly at Ronnie.

 _"I am not!"_ Ronnie snapped, whacking the blackboard with her wand, making the text shimmer and vanish. "You're right, Hermione, this thing's broken!"

"Seems like it," Hermione agreed. "Maybe we should just forget the blackboard. It was a useful tool for breaking up the dialogue a bit and add an element of visual description to the narrative, but now it only seems like it's going to be a source of bad comedy."

Almost at once, the text on the blackboard changed to _WHO ARE YOU CALLING A SOURCE OF BAD COMEDY?_

"You can't honestly think you're being funn—" Hermione began, but then interrupted herself. "No. I'm _not_ having a discussion with a _blackboard_. Ronnie, just ignore the blackboard and keep going."

"Right. No stupid blackboard's gonna stop us from making it _Happen,"_ said Ronnie.

"This is starting to sound vaguely dirty," said Holly.

"Only _starting?"_ Ronnie giggled. All traces of annoyance were gone from her and she was back to looking giddy. "It's not. It's nothing dirty. Trust me. Okay, tip number one! Ready?"

"I suppose."

"Don't just make yourself better than your canon counterpart and leave it at that. You can be better in _some_ ways, but you shouldn't be better in _all_ ways. And you _definitely_ shouldn't be better in ways that leaves other characters redundant."

Holly stroked her chin. "Like, for example?"

"Like — like schoolwork!" said Ronnie. "Lots of Fem!Harrys are exceptionally talented at magic and become top of the class without trying, but that kinda leaves _Hermione_ with nothing to do. And showing _her_ up in a story? Not gonna earn you a lot of fans."

"All right, no being smarter than Hermione," Holly nodded. "Got it."

"Tip number two!" Ronnie made to tap the blackboard again, but thought better of it. "For every advantage you have over your canon counterpart, you should have a disadvantage of roughly equal importance."

"Like how _you're_ great with animals, but rubbish at chess?" said Holly. "Because really, Ron's chess skills never came up _that_ often in the books."

"Well, all right, but I was thinking more like character stuff," said Ronnie. "Extra nice if you find something that can be an advantage in one way and a disadvantage in others. Like — I don't have canon Ron's insecurities, right? Advantage; this means I'm harder to put off my course than he is and I don't lose my nerve. Disadvantage; it means I'm more reckless and I tend to just assume that the first idea that enters my head is a good one, even when it _really_ isn't, and so I land myself into danger a lot more. See what I mean?"

"I think so," said Holly.

"Good! Now you try it!"

"Errrm." Holly felt a little put on the spot. "I'm, er, I — Thanks to growing up with a loving guardian, I'm not as inclined to keep my problems to myself as canon Harry is, and I trust authority figures more," she tried. "Advantage; I get more help and am more of a team player. Disadvantage; I... _need_ more help? Because I'm not as used to doing things for myself?"

"Going for the 'helpless girl' image, are we?" Ronnie grinned.

"Well, it's not _that_ easy!" Holly protested. "Okay! I'm better at Quidditch because I got more practice, but worse at Defence against the Dark Arts because, minor hexes and jinxes aside, I got _less_ practice! Oh, and — and I'm rubbish at the Disarming Charm, because my first instinct is to just hit them with a Knockback Jinx!" She stopped and blinked. That surge of inspiration had come out of nowhere.

"Now you're talking!" said Ronnie, looking like she wanted to bounce up and down in delight. "Go on, go on!"

"And really, me not being the Girl Who Lived is both and advantage and a disadvantage, isn't it?" Holly felt like she was getting the hang of it now. "I'm not such an obvious target for Voldemort, and I don't have this entire 'unwanted fame' thing going on, but at the same time I can pretty much kiss all the special treatment I got in canon goodbye, I can't speak Parseltongue, I probably don't have Voldemort's twin wand... I... _Neville!_ Neville has the holly-and-phoenix-feather wand, he must have it! And that's something we laugh about, his wand is holly and my name is Holly..."

"Yes! Yes! Continue!"

Holly was too caught up in the sudden torrent of ideas to even question Ronnie's eagerness. "But my wand is oak, like Hagrid's! Oak and dragon heartstring! And I still have the Invisibility Cloak, that's mine by right, Dumbledore would still have borrowed it from my Dad to find out about the Hallows, but he gave it it to Sirius so that he could give it to me — and Sirius kept kept the Cloak secret from me for years, but then he gave it to me as a surprise going-away present when I left for Hogwarts!"

"It's _Happening,_ it's _Happening!"_ Ronnie really was bouncing up and down now.

"This means Neville has to unite the Hallows... But that's okay, we'll help him with that," said Holly. "I met him, and you, on the train, and we hit it off almost straight away, and my favourite subject at Hogwarts apart from flying is Potions because Snape isn't teaching it, and I'm still friends with Hagrid because he was friends with my parents and visited Sirius and me sometimes, but it's the first time I actually meet any of the other teachers, including Professor Dumbledore, and I'm worried that I won't be a Gryffindor because I think Sirius and Remus and, and in some weird way my parents, will be disappointed if I'm not a Gryffindor, but almost as soon as the Sorting Hat touches my head, it places me in Gryffindor, and then... and then... oh..."

She trailed off, suddenly fully realising the strange sensation that had come over her. It was by no means unpleasant, but felt a little overwhelming. It was as if someone had opened a door in her head, a door she hadn't even known she existed, and all of a sudden... she _understood_.

"Oh," she said again. She reached up, took her glasses off and blinked. The world was a little blurry around her, but even with her bad eyesight she could see Ronnie grinning at her like a fool. Slowly, she put her glasses back on, letting the world come into sharp focus again. Her heart was pounding furiously in her chest.

Ronnie was looking intensely at her with the most giddy expression Holly had ever seen on her. "It _Happened!"_ she breathed, her clenched fists shaking with excitement. "That was it _Happening,_ wasn't it?!"

"I... Yeah, I think so," said Holly, still overwhelmed. "I just started to see the story evolve around me, and I... I just _knew."_

 _"Yes!"_ Ronnie punched the air. "That's exactly how I felt it too when it was me! For me it didn't _Happen_ until around the second chapter of _Weasley Girl,_ but I had a feeling you'd get it quicker! Oooh, Holly, I'm sorry I annoyed you like that before, with not explaining anything, but if I'd tried describing what it was like you wouldn't have understood..."

"But now I do." Holly felt a sensation bubbling up in her stomach; a soft giggle escaping her throat with more threatening to follow. "It's... I... I started out just treating this like, I don't know, an intellectual exercise..."

"But you started to see all the ways your own birth changed the world around you, in smaller or greater ways," said Ronnie, "and then you began seeing the changes those changes inflicted on _you_..."

"And I saw how the story evolved with me, and how I evolved with the story!"

"And you realised you're _you!"_

"Yes! I'm _me!_ I'm not just any Fem!Harry, I'm _me!_ I'm Holly Jane Potter! I live with Sirius! I got my first real broomstick when I was seven! I love the smell of coffee but I hate the taste! My favourite colour is yellow! When I look into the Mirror of Erised, I see my parents healed and sane, and the Marauders all together and happy! And, and all these things I didn't know about canon Harry, and didn't know about me, I _know!_ I'm a _character_ , Ronnie, I'm a _person!_ I'm — _I'm alive!"_

 _"I know!_ Feels great, doesn't it!"

"It _does!"_

Laughing and giggling like mad, the two girls embraced each other tightly.

Hermione, who had been silent for an uncharacteristically long time and just let Ronnie guide Holly's journey of self-discovery, smiled a little to herself, and then turned her head to look at the reader.

"Oh. Sorry," she said. "They were getting so excited that I didn't have the heart to interrupt."

 _WHAT A COUPLE OF IDIOTS,_ the blackboard declared.

Hermione whacked it lightly with her hand. "Quit that!" She turned back to the reader. "In case you didn't get what just happened — sorry, _Happened_ — there, let me explain. Holly's just had a major internal revelation and is currently experiencing what we might call _'Character Euphoria.'_ That tends to make a character feel a little... giddy."

She looked at Holly and Ronnie, who were dancing with each other, twirling around the room and laughing.

"Though it's not always _that_ extreme," she added. "And we usually don't get to express it directly in the story like this, but...well, that's the beauty of being in a metafictional story."

Stepping up to the teacher's desk, ignoring the blackboard, she looked at the still-giddy Holly and Ronnie, and then got a thoughtful look on her face, trying to figure out how to properly explain to the reader what had transpired.

"Well," she finally said. "You know how some authors will tell you that their characters start living their own lives, so to speak? Writing themselves, as it were? Yes, that was what you just saw happen, from the _character's_ point of view. That was basically Holly becoming a character in her own right. She started out only thinking of herself as a concept, a Fem!Harry, dime a dozen, nothing special. Like she said, just an intellectual exercise. Then, she got invested. Then she started _caring_. And then... Then she started _living."_

Hermione shrugged, smiling a little sheepishly. "Sorry, I'm not explaining it very well. Any of you who are writers, who have felt characters come to life as you write them... you might know what I'm talking about. It wasn't even really planned from the author's side, but then we realised Holly was becoming more of a character, beginning to take on a life of her own and not just as another Fem!Harry... and the rest practically wrote itself."

 _BLAH BLAH BLAH,_ the blackboard commented. If a chalk-written text could be said to have a sour tone, this chalk-written text certainly did. _NOBODY CARES._

"Of course," Hermione said, glancing at the blackboard. "Characters, or objects, coming to life...err, or becoming self-aware, isn't _always_ a good thing. — Goodness, look at the word count!" she suddenly exclaimed. "We've been at this for over ten thousand words! We're _long_ overdue for another break!"

 _YOU'RE MUCH TOO LONG-WINDED! AT LEAST_ _WEASLEY GIRL_ _HAD SCENE BREAKS_ , the blackboard complained.

Hermione gave it a scalding look, but she smiled pleasantly enough to the reader. "Next chapter, Holly will hopefully have come down from her current euphoric high. And then we're going to look at the gender-flip as approached from the opposite, and far less common end; a character who's canonically female, is turned male! That's right; next chapter it's _my_ turn! Hope to see you then!"

And then, just like at the end of the previous chapter, the blackboard changed to read:

* * *

 **TO BE CONTINUED...**

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** The blackboard waited until it was down in the author's notes to add: _HOLLY. WHAT A STUPID NAME. I WOULD HAVE PICKED ROSE._


	3. Hadrian

**Back again! I have a bit of a request for the lovely people who are reading this: If you want to ask me, the author, a question, could you do it in a** _ **signed**_ **review? That way I can answer you in a PM. I'm perfectly fine with unsigned reviews, of course, but I don't really have a way to respond to them. Okay, thank you for your attention!**

* * *

 **Hermione Granger's Stupid And Overly Lengthy Guide to  
GENDER-FLIP FANFICTION**

 **A Meaningless And Narrow-Minded Series Of Rambles About Things Nobody Even Cares About**

 **LESSON 3**

* * *

"What's wrong with the title?" said Holly, looking up at it. Though she was still feeling perfectly cheerful, she had mostly come down from her character euphoria from the last chapter, and was back to paying attention to her surroundings.

"It's the blackboard," Hermione sighed. "It was a mistake to establish it as the thing that displayed the titles and _To Be Continued_ text. Now it's decided to act all rude, for some reason."

"What is your problem, board?" Ronnie demanded, placing her hands on her hips and scowling at the blackboard.

 _I'M JUST TELLING THE TRUTH,_ the blackboard wrote. _THIS ENTIRE THING IS STUPID AND YOU'RE BEING PREACHY._

"I wouldn't call me preachy," said Hermione, a little feebly. "Not preachy, as such. I just have — strong opinions, that's all."

Ronnie cocked her head and gave the blackboard a suspicious look. "Where are you keeping your _brains_ , anyway?" she said, remembering her father's well-known advice.

 _THAT'S PERSONAL!_ the blackboard snapped.

Ronnie pointed at it. "I'm keeping my eye on you," she said warningly.

 _LOOK AT THE BRAVE AND WONDERFUL RONNIE WEASLEY, BOLDLY THREATENING A HELPLESS BLACKBOARD WHICH CAN'T DEFEND ITSELF._

"Ignore it!" said Hermione firmly as Ronnie sputtered angrily.

"What's with the author's message at the very top, though?" said Holly, pointing up. "The text in bold, just above the title, that talks about signed and unsigned reviews?"

"Oh, that's just a response to a review we got," Hermione explained, happy to get the attention away from the blackboard. "See, on , 'signed' reviews are reviews made by people who have their own accounts and have used them to comment on a fic. 'Unsigned' reviews are anonymous reviews, or at least reviews made without the use of an account. Are you with me so far?"

"I think so."

"Good! Well, if it's a 'signed' review, that means the author can respond to it in a private message, but this option doesn't exist for 'unsigned' reviews. Which means that if an unsigned review asks a question, the author has some problems actually answering to said question."

"I see." Holly nodded. "But if it's that important to answer a question, couldn't the author just answer it in the author's message instead?"

"Sometimes that works, but not always," said Hermione. "Besides, with this site's ban on interactive fiction..."

"Answering a single question wouldn't be interactive fiction," said Holly. "I think we can answer one question from a reviewer here, can't we? This story already prides itself on how meta it is — and if it's relevant to the discussion here, then what's the harm?"

"All right," Hermione agreed. "Since it is a relevant question. Mystery0028, this one's for you."

"Nice name," said Ronnie. "Very mysterious."

"Quiet, you," said Hermione. "It was a three-part question, and the first part of was whether the author has ever written a story with Holly in it before. And the answer is no — that part in the previous chapter, that was us (and the author) literally and authentically creating Holly from scratch, background story and all. _Ronnie_ is from a previous story, or rather a planned trilogy of stories — but Holly's original to this one."

"I think I turned out pretty well," said Holly with a slight giggle.

"Modest, aren't you?" Ronnie teased, laying an arm around Holly's shoulder.

"The second part of the question," said Hermione, "was whether we were planning on including Holly in a fanfic, if she wasn't already in one."

"I _am_ in a fanfic," said Holly. "I'm in this one."

"I think Mystery0028 meant whether there was going to be a fanfic with the premise and backstory we laid out in the previous chapter," said Hermione.

Holly thought about it. "I'm not sure. We'll see how this one goes, I suppose?"

"And we still have the _Weasley Girl_ trilogy going," said Hermione. "Given the presence of Ronnie here, I suppose this particular fanfic can be classified as a sort of alternate spin-off of that."

"Does that mean Holly's gonna show up in _Weasley Girl?"_ said Ronnie.

"Doubtful. _Harry's_ already in that story, and we're not planning any in-story gender change, at least that I'm aware," said Hermione. "So... Answer: Anything's possible, but in any case it won't be for a while."

"That seems about right," said Holly. "Let's focus on what we have going for now."

"The third part of the question," said Hermione, "was if we weren't going to do a fanfic with that premise, would it be all right if Mystery0028 wrote one?"

Holly, Ronnie and Hermione all exchanged glances, then turned back to the readers.

"Sure," said Holly.

"Yeah, why not?" said Ronnie.

"We'd be flattered," said Hermione. "Perhaps when and if you do post it, you'll tell our author about it in review or PM, so that we can read it too? We'd be interested in seeing what you might do with the scenario."

Holly and Ronnie nodded in agreement.

"And with that little Q&A out of the way," said Hermione, "I think it's time for us to resume the lecture." She stepped up to the blackboard, but this time she didn't tap it with her wand.

 _JUST TRY IT,_ the blackboard warned, having read the narrative's blatant pointing out of what Hermione _wasn't_ doing.

"What _is_ that blackboard still doing here, anyway?" said Ronnie. "All it does is insult us! Get rid of it!"

"Can't," said Hermione. "I tried during the break, while you two were dancing around, but I couldn't even Vanish it. I think the magic of the Room of Requirement is keeping it here."

"But why? We don't _require_ it!" said Ronnie.

 _MAYBE_ _YOU_ _DON'T. IT'S ALL I HAVE LEFT!_

"What's that supposed to mean?"

 _OH, NOTHING. JUST GO ON WITH YOUR POINTLESS LITTLE LECTURE._

"...that was ominous," said Holly after the text had vanished from the blackboard.

 _"Definitely_ keeping an eye on that thing," said Ronnie.

"Yes," said Hermione. "Good idea. In the meantime, though — since this is the entire point of the fanfic and all, are you ready to continue?" When the other two responded in the affirmative, she went on: "Up until now we've mainly concerned ourselves with one direction of gender-flip: The male-to-female."

Holly raised herself from her chair and turned around in a circle, giving the reader the opportunity to see what she looked like from all angles.

"Yes, thank you, Holly," said Hermione. "Now, this is by far the most common type of gender-flip. Female-to-male flips certainly do happen, but they're nowhere near as frequently seen as the male-to-female ones. Anyone like to hazard a guess as to why this is?"

"Because girls are awesome and everybody wants to be a girl!" Ronnie immediately answered.

"Thank you, Ronnie, and now for the _serious_ answer, please."

Ronnie giggled and then shrugged. "I dunno. Makes for sexier porn?"

Holly smirked at her. "I know we're on the Internet and all, but is that your answer to everything?"

"I've only said it once before! And I wasn't even _me_ then, I was Ron!"

Hermione huffed, looking rather embarrassed about the entire thing. "All right, fine, maybe some people think like that, but really, women aren't inherently sexier or more sexual than men are."

"Probably a lot of people would disagree with you on that," said Ronnie. _"I_ think women are sexier."

"Yes, but _you_ informed us that you're a lesbian in this story!"

"What, just because I'm not straight, I don't get a say?"

"I think I've got one," said Holly calmly.

Ronnie and Hermione stopped bickering and looked at her with some expectation.

"Well... There are just more male characters, aren't there?" said Holly. "Especially more male major characters. Unless it's an explicitly 'girly' franchise, you'll be lucky to have more than one major female character at any given time."

"That's not a problem for _our_ franchise," said Ronnie. "We've got _loads_ of female characters!"

"Yeah, but even we've got more male characters, especially major ones," said Holly. "Apart from Hermione, can you name me any girl who plays an important role in all seven Harry Potter books?"

"Ginny!" said Ronnie immediately.

"Nice try, but Ginny's barely in the first book, and a very minor character in the third and fourth," said Holly. "She doesn't really become a major character until around book five."

"Okay, Professor McGonagall, then!"

"Not a major character, and seldom very involved in the plots."

"Mum!"

"Same as McGonagall."

"Luna — no, wait, she's not in the first four books at all." Ronnie sighed. "Okay, _fine_. But the franchise is full of characters who have big important roles for a book or two and then are minor ones for the rest. Like Rita Skeeter, or Tonks, or Cho, or Umbridge, or Trelawney... They're still important!"

"I never said they weren't," said Holly. "I just said the number of important _male_ characters is higher."

"Well, I bet you can't name five _male_ characters who play important roles in all seven books."

"Harry, Ron, Draco Malfoy, Fred, George, Snape, Dumbledore, Hagrid, I'd add Voldemort except he's not in the third book..."

"Okay, okay, _okay!"_ Ronnie held up her hands. "You made your point!"

"You asked."

"So to sum up," said Hermione, "your theory is that male characters are more often subject to the gender-flip because there are more male character _to_ gender-flip."

"More or less," said Holly.

"That is certainly a thought," said Hermione. "It could also have to do with gender roles, of course, as well as the various stigmas for women in traditionally masculine roles compared and contrasted with the very different stigmas for men in traditionally feminine roles... But let's not get too off-topic here. We're now approximately two thousand words into this chapter, and we should perhaps get to the point I was leading up to: _My_ gender-flip!"

 _I CAN HARDLY WAIT,_ the blackboard wrote, showing an inexplicable but masterful ability to convey absolute sarcasm in written text.

"You can just shut your —" Ronnie began, but then paused. The blackboard didn't have a mouth. "—text," she finished weakly.

 _SHUT MY TEXT? I'M_ _SO_ _INTIMIDATED._

 _"Ignore,"_ Hermione hissed, and then went on: "Given that we already went through the creation process fairly thoroughly with Holly," she said, "I hope it's okay if I do my change somewhat quicker? Otherwise we'll end up with another ten-thousand-word session, and much of it _is_ ground we've already covered. I was going to use the blackboard to demonstrate what a Male!Hermione usually looks like, but —"

 _NO! I'M NOT YOUR SLAVE!_

"No." She agreed, raising her wand. "Luckily, Male!Hermione, being far rarer than Fem!Harry, tends not to vary as much in appearance. For some reason, he tends to be rather tall and slender. He had dark brown hair, usually cut short so that its frizziness is less of a problem. Large front teeth are seldom mentioned, but then again, mine don't tend to get much mention either."

"So, are you going to have large front teeth?" said Ronnie curiously.

"I was thinking I'd have braces," said Hermione. "At least during my younger years. My parents are dentists, after all."

"But when you're older...?"

"When I'm older, obviously the braces come off."

"Wait!" said Holly, suddenly realising something that had gone unmentioned and uncommented upon for more than two chapters now. "Speaking of older — how old _are_ we, anyway?"

All three of them looked at one another in surprise as it sank in: They had no idea how old they were in this story. They'd established basic looks, basic surroundings, but never actually paused to think what Hogwarts year they were in, whether they were old enough to drink Firewhisky or what. It hadn't seemed important.

"How old do we feel?" Ronnie finally said.

"We're obviously old enough to have some magical experience," said Hermione. "Fifteen? Sixteen?"

"Fifteen's good," said Holly. "That means we're still at Hogwarts, but we've got quite a bit of experience."

"Fifteen it is," Hermione agreed. And then she raised her wand to point at herself. "Third variation of a non-canon spell, then — _Puer Transmutatio!"_

There was another flash of pink light (which for some reason surprised Holly; she would have thought that the light would have been blue this time), and Hermione shot up in the air, growing almost half a foot, as her dark, frizzy hair retracted into her scalp to form a short, boyish cut, and her body reshaped itself...

The change took about three seconds, same as it had with Ronnie. The boy who lowered his wand could have been Hermione's brother; he had the same brown eyes and hair, even if said hair was short, he had similar if decidedly more masculine features, and the alert, intelligent look was almost completely identical.

"Well," he said, in a clearly masculine voice. "How do I look?"

"Er — nice," said Ronnie, a little pink. "I... liked you better as a girl, but that's me."

"I'm still Hermione," said the boy. "Just like you're still Ron, and Holly is still Harry. I just have a Y chromosome now, that's all." He slid his wand back into his robe pocket and nodded in satisfaction. Just like Holly and Ronnie before him, he'd slid right into his new body and role without any problems; he'd been a boy his entire life and knew it.

Hermione...no, wait, he couldn't be Hermione now, could he? While 'Harry' was at least somewhat acceptable as a female name, and 'Ron' could be a nickname for 'Veronica', there was no way any boy would be called 'Hermione.'

"The narrative makes a good point," said the boy. "Just so it doesn't have to call me _'the boy formerly known as Hermione'_ or something, we should figure out my name. Any ideas?"

"Hismione," said Ronnie promptly, and giggled. When Holly groaned and the boy just gave Ronnie a look, she made the eternally-bad mistake of trying to explain the joke. "You see, you couldn't be _Her_ mione, so I thought..."

"Yes, I got that," said the boy dryly. "No."

"If I understood it right," said Holly, "we need a name that it's plausible that your parents might have chosen. I would have suggested 'Herman,' but —"

 _"Much_ too common," said the boy. "My parents gave their daughter a classical Shakespearean name that everybody needed a pronunciation guide to say properly. They would _not_ call their son something so common as 'Herman.' I thought about 'Hermes,' since that's the basis for 'Hermione' and has been used for a few Male!Hermiones, but somehow that doesn't seem quite right..."

"All right, how about we start by looking at Shakespeare then?" Holly suggested. "Name some male Shakespearean characters."

"All right." The boy began listing: "Hamlet, Romeo, Macbeth, Duncan, Horatio, Polonious, Prospero, Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Yorick, Othello, Iago, Fortinbras..."

It surprised Holly — though in hindsight it probably shouldn't have — what a dirty laugh fifteen-year-old Ronnie was capable of. _"Fourteen bras?"_ the redhead laughed. "I wanna meet that guy!"

 _WHO THE HELL CARES?_ The blackboard was definitely annoyed. _JUST PICK A NAME! WE'VE BEEN HERE FOR AGES!_

"I didn't know a blackboard could get impatient," said Holly.

 _YOU'RE TAKING SO LONG WITH THIS, A_ _ROCK __WOULD GET IMPATIENT!_

"I'm not skimping on the naming process!" said the boy. "Besides, I don't see _you_ coming up with any suggestions."

 _OKAY, YOU'RE BZWRNYAK GRANGER!_

"What?! How do you even pronounce that?"

 _I THOUGHT YOU WANTED A NAME NOBODY COULD PRONOUNCE!_

"I wanted a name that had some _thought_ put into it, not a name that looks like a cat just walked over the keyboard!"

"Yeah, shut up!" said Ronnie to the blackboard, who looked like it would have made a rude gesture at her if it had been able to.

"How about 'Hercules'?" said Holly. "It's not really Shakespearean, but it is tied to Greek mythology."

Still a little worked up, the boy snorted. _"Roman_ mythology, actually. His Greek name was _Heracles_. People always get that wrong. Anything's better than Bzwrnyak, I suppose, but —"

"Wow!" Ronnie exclaimed. "You actually did manage to pronounce it?"

"No, I didn't. I just had the author type it for me in my dialogue. Anyway, as I was going to say, do I really look like a _Hercules_ to you? Or, for that matter, a _Heracles?"_

"It could work as an ironic name," Holly suggested, somewhat feebly.

 _"Hadrian!"_ Ronnie suddenly said. "Like the Roman Emperor! It's a classic name, it's pretty pretentious, and it begins with an H! Sounds like a good fit to me!"

"Hadrian Granger," said the potential Hadrian. "Well, I don't know... There is a certain something about it..."

"It's either Hadrian or Troy," said Ronnie.

"Like in Helen of Troy, I take it," said the boy. "Actually, I think there are a couple of Male!Hermiones named Troy out there. Not a bad name as such, but... all in all, I think I do prefer Hadrian. It's a strong name, indicating a determined and efficient person. And it could be said to at least be an indirect reference to Adrian, one of the noblemen from Shakespeare's _The Tempest._ A minor character, but depicted as a good and sympathetic friend to Alonso. All right, Hadrian it is."

"Hadrian," Holly agreed. "What about a middle name?"

"Jack," said the boy who was now named Hadrian. "A common name to contrast Hadrian. Besides, that does reference a Shakespearean play - Jack Cade, the rebel. And please, Ronnie, don't bring up your transgender cousin here. We can have more than one person with the name Jack."

"I wasn't gonna say anything," said Ronnie innocently. "So, Hadrian. Wanna give us a summary of what you're like?"

"Well, what do _you_ think I'm like?" said Hadrian. "I have my own ideas, but I'd like to hear your opinions."

"Right," said Ronnie eagerly. "Hermione as a boy... You'd be..." Her face suddenly fell. "Oh, no!" she groaned.

"What?" said Holly and Hadrian in almost perfect unison.

 _"You're Percy!"_

"I'm what?" Hadrian blinked.

"Think about it! Really smart, stickler for detail, obsessed with schoolwork, big vocabulary, bit of a social outcast, a little haughty... _it's Percy!"_ Ronnie grimaced. "Okay, Percy's not too bad when he stops being such a git, but I don't want _two_ of him in my life! _One_ Percy is more than enough!"

"I'm not like Percy! Don't be silly, Ronnie!" Hadrian snapped, ironically with a very Percy-like expression — though the moment he noticed that the narrative was calling it 'Percy-like' he hurriedly changed it.

"I kind of imagined a male Hermione more like a Sherlock Holmes-type," said Holly quickly.

"Really?" Hadrian stopped being annoyed with the narrative and instead looked flattered. "I don't know if I'd say I have his absolute brilliance with deductive reasoning, but —"

"You figured out that Slytherin's monster was a Basilisk, and that Remus Lupin was a werewolf," said Harry. "Even if that last one was pretty obvious in hindsight, that's still some impressive deduction."

Hadrian straightened himself a little, clearly pleased with the praise. "Well... thank you, Holly, that's certainly something to consider. Incidentally, given that Sherlock Holmes is a character that's been subject to many interpretations over the years, were you thinking of any particular interpretation? The Holmes from the original books, the more gentlemanly Basil Rathbone version, the Bohemian version we had with Jeremy Brett...or the popular Benedict Cumberbatch modern-day version?"

"I was thinking more like a younger, less scruffy Jonny Lee Miller," said Holly. "Without the 'recovering addict' angle, of course. Cumberbatch's a little too cold and dispassionate."

"Hmm," said Hadrian, considering the value of being in a story where they could acknowledge TV shows that wouldn't come out until years after the _Harry Potter_ books had all been released. "It could work."

He turned to the reader and put on a 'lecturer' expression, not unlike the one he'd used when he was a girl. "Holly was on to something here, by the way. If you're creating a character and are having problems envisioning him — or her — a trick that might work is to envision what actor you would want to play him or her. Since we're talking total fantasy casting here, you don't have to limit yourself to living actors, or actors of a certain age. You can even just take aspects of an actor you like, or a certain performance by that actor. Obviously, I am not really like Jonny Lee Miller, who is in his forties at the time of writing, but perhaps envisioning aspects of his performances can help the author get a grip on me as a character."

"And help distinguish you from Percy," said Ronnie.

Hadrian rolled his eyes. "Yes, and help distinguish me from Percy. But that particular aside over with, let's consider how I might have grown up differently from Hermione."

"You're still Muggle-born, right?" said Ronnie.

"Of course."

"Then I don't know," said Ronnie. "I mean, how did Hermione grow up in the first place? Not like she talked about her Muggle life and family a whole lot."

"True," said Hadrian, with a nod. "This is partly why my change was so much quicker than Holly's. The fact is that my canon life is hardly explored at all, largely because my Muggle family were considered 'boring' compared to yours, Ronnie."

 _THEY ARE!_ The blackboard had been silent for a while, but now it added: _WHO CARES ABOUT A COUPLE OF MUGGLES?_

"Authors who want to write a gender-flipped Hermione should," said Hadrian. "It's more of a challenge, I'll admit, compared to Harry and Ron. Harry's pre-Hogwarts life is pretty well-documented, and Ron's family is very central. We know a lot more about what their early childhoods were like, which gives a clearer basis and contrast and makes it easier to see what might have been different. It's a lot harder to say what would have been different if you don't know what the situation is like in the first place."

"Isn't that kinda liberating, though?" said Holly. "It means your background is a blank page! You can decide literally anything! You can make it as exciting or as boring as you like!"

"Well, within reason," said Hadrian. "I'm not saying it couldn't be interesting if my parents were really secret agents or something like that, and I just said they were dentists as part of a cover-up story, but really, the more interesting my Muggle life is the more it'd be expected to actually come into play during the story. Since Hermione's Muggle life was barely touched upon in canon, it probably wasn't all that exciting."

"So?" said Ronnie. "We're blatantly an alternate universe."

"Yes, but we're also trying to avoid the 'better than canon in every way' syndrome, remember?" Hadrian shook his head. "No, I doubt my life really was very exciting before my Hogwarts letter. Perfectly normal, upper middle-class. Nothing really special. I was bookish, I liked studying, and was probably top of my class in every subject."

Holly and Ronnie looked at each other, then at him. "Definitely," they said in unison.

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Hadrian grinned. "If we take it as read that I was as smart and bookish as Hermione in canon, and grew up in roughly the same circumstances, there would probably have been some differences purely based on our sexes. It's not unlikely that I, as a smart and bookish boy, would have grown up slightly less driven and anxious to prove myself, purely for social reasons. Oh, I probably would have been teased a bit, I think, because studious and bookish children are popular with teachers but not always so much with their peers. I can imagine I was a bit of a loner...and frankly, given my magical abilities, I could easily start viewing myself as special, because, well, I would be in a position of privilege as not only the smartest boy in class but also an unaware wizard, who could do strange things no-one else could." He frowned. "I might get a little arrogant about it, to be honest."

"Well, you were pretty arrogant as a girl too," said Ronnie with a slight giggle.

"No more than was realistic for a girl of my brains to be," Hadrian countered. "But I think one of my main problems in canon is that, in the words of Matt Guion, I'm very good at giving advice, but not always so good at taking advice."

"Sounds like he's got you pegged pretty well," said Ronnie. "Wait, who's Matt Guion?"

"Oh, he's an American fellow who does videos on YouTube," said Hadrian. "His most popular videos are the _Books VS Movies_ ones, where he compares books to their movie adaptations. He did the _Harry Potter_ series a while back. Most interesting viewing, I encourage the readers to look them up if they're curious. But getting back to the matter at hand here, we're sort of getting into my strengths and flaws as a character, aren't we?"

"You're not going to say that because you're a boy you're obviously going to be a better student than canon Hermione, are you?" Ronnie groaned.

"I'm not _that_ arrogant," said Hadrian. "Besides, canon Hermione is about as good as it's plausible for an exceptionally talented and intelligent witch her age to be. I don't need to up the game and turn myself into a Dumbledore- or Tom Riddle-level prodigy. _'Smartest wizard of his age'_ is good enough for me!"

Ronnie looked at Holly. "The sad part is that _that_ was the less arrogant option."

"Just because I'm not aiming to be _better_ than canon Hermione, I shouldn't aim to be _worse_ either," said Hadrian. "I'm thinking most of her talents, as well as her flaws, can transfer to me pretty painlessly. However, since Holly mentioned Jonny Lee Miller's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, I'll admit I'm imagining myself as a little more... _cocky_ than canon Hermione, which would certainly lead to — _what do you mean by 'that's because canon Hermione doesn't have one,' Ronnie?!"_

"Well, unless there was something she didn't _tell_ us..." Ronnie managed to keep her face straight for that long, but then she burst out laughing at Hadrian's expression.

"I didn't — that is, I meant — _yes, let's all be really childish about this, why don't we!"_

"Watch the italics," Ronnie managed to say between her giggles. "Starting to use them rather a lot!"

"I'm so glad the two of you are getting along the same as always, gender swap or no," said Holly, cheerfully but with more than a bit of sarcasm in her voice.

That shut them up. Ronnie was still pink, and Hadrian's voice rather softer as he said: "Anyway, my character hasn't quite settled yet. The author hasn't quite got a feel for me yet, so be patient if in these early stages I might have a moment or two of OOC behaviour."

"That's okay," said Ronnie, her voice steady again. "It happened to me too. The author actually had to go back to the first chapter of _Weasley Girl_ and re-write a few lines so they wouldn't feel so jarring."

"Oh?" said Holly curiously. "Which ones?"

"...I don't remember." Ronnie turned pink. "Sorry, it's been three years."

"Fair enough, I suppose." Holly tried to pretend she wasn't disappointed.

"Anyway, I think that's more or less it," said Hadrian. "If we insert me into the potential story about Holly growing up with Sirius and Neville being the Boy Who Lived, I might end up as Neville's friend. We got along pretty well in canon, and with us both being boys, we'd naturally be a little closer. Going back to the Sherlock Holmes parallel, I can actually see a bit of a 'Holmes and Watson' vibe between the two of us... Except, of course, in this case the Watson analogy is actually the one with the great destiny and the Holmes analogy is the brainy sidekick."

"What about Holly and me?" said Ronnie, looking at him a little anxiously. "Aren't _we_ friends?"

"I'm probably a little dismissive of you at first," said Hadrian. "Whereas canon Hermione was all about ordering Harry and Ron about, I'm just contemptuous of you two — but I get better after the incident with the troll."'

"We still encounter the troll?" said Holly.

"Quirrell obviously is still trying to get to the Philosopher's Stone, and there's no reason for him not to use the same tactic as before," said Hadrian. "But since you don't include a troll in a story and _not_ have your main characters confront it somehow, we'll end up against it. Since I'm not very likely to go off and cry in the girl's loo, maybe in my case I actually _did_ think I could handle the troll on my own and go off to confront it. Sort of a way to prove myself. I get in over my head, and you two barge in like the heroines you are and save the day."

"And Neville," said Holly. "If you're his best friend, he would want to save you."

"Probably. Well, I'm impressed with your bravery nonetheless, admit I was getting too arrogant, and we make up, touching scene, not a dry eye in the house," said Hadrian. "And after that we're friends, all four of us."

"So we become a gang of four, just like in _Weasley Girl?"_ said Holly, beginning to wonder if it was just a coincidence or if this particular author just really liked the idea of Neville becoming part of the core group, and gangs consisting of two boys and two girls.

"Yes, but obviously we won't be _Potter's Gang,_ like in that universe," said Hadrian. "For once, we've established that Snape isn't around, so there's no-one to sarcastically come up with that particular collective nickname. Besides, in this universe, Holly's not the most important member of the group; Neville is."

 _SO CALL THE GANG 'NATIG',_ said the blackboard. _PERFECT ACRONYM._

"Acronym for what?" said Hadrian suspiciously.

 _NEVILLE AND THREE IDIOTIC GENDER-BENDERS!_

Ronnie leapt to her feet, pointing her wand at the blackboard. "I'm warning you!" she snarled. "One more remark like that —!"

Holly stood as well, and pulled Ronnie back. "Don't," she said. "It's just a blackboard."

 _JUST A BLACKBOARD._ The text showed up and vanished almost at once, and the blackboard was empty and blank again.

"What did it mean by that?" said Hadrian.

"I don't know," said Holly, who had got Ronnie to sit back down. "Just continue. No Snape means we don't have an obvious bad guy to suspect. And since I grew up with Sirius, Hagrid probably never took me to Gringotts. Sirius would have taken me to Diagon Alley for school shopping. Unless we happened to meet up with Hagrid there, I wouldn't know anything about any small package being taken from Gringotts just before the infamous break-in."

"But I'm probably more intrigued with the mystery of the troll," said Hadrian. "So we might try alternate routes to investigate. Who knows what will happen then? Apart from the author writing that story, it is?"

"Yeah, I know: Butterfly effect," said Holly. "So, is this it, then? All three of us have been flipped. What next? Are you going to bring in more people to change?"

"Bloody hell, are we going to end up flipping absolutely everybody?" said Ronnie, looking uncertain as to whether be fascinated or terrified at such a prospect. "Female Dumbledore, female Hagrid, female Neville, female Malfoy, male Luna, female Fred and George, male Ginny, female Voldemort, female Snape, male McGonagall, male Bellatrix..."

"An entire gender-flipped universe, you mean?" said Hadrian.

"Yeah."

"Probably not. You've seen part of the gender-flip process, all the things that need to be considered for the new character to work, not only as a mirror of the original character but as a character in his or her own right. Add to it that you'd need to re-think quite a few things about wizard society in general if everyone was the opposite sex; no matter how much we try to strive for gender equality, there would be some changes. It could actually be an interesting task to sit down and work out all the changes, and all the characters, and figure out how and if they fit together... but I think that project is a little too vast to start on in a fanfic like this."

"Bears thinking about, though," said Holly. "What would Voldemort be like if he was a woman?"

"There have been stories where Voldemort was a woman," said Hadrian slowly. "Unfortunately, most of them have been... not very serious. Or they've been romances between Harry and the female Voldemort."

"Ugh," Holly grimaced, thereby demonstrating that regardless of gender, a Harry/Voldemort ship was about as likely to happen in this author's eyes as Harry/Snape.

"On the whole, in fanfics at least, protagonists are a lot more commonly given the gender-flip treatment than the antagonists are," said Hadrian. "There are several reasons for why this might be... This would of course be pure speculation, mind you."

"Not like we've let that stop us before," said Ronnie with a shrug.

"Right. One reason could be that the antagonists are seldom point-of-view characters. They tend to get less screen-time than the protagonists, even if they often make more out of the screen-time they do get. So most fanfic writers go for gender-flipping the characters they know best — which are the protagonists."

"A lot of villains do have huge fan bases and a lot of fanfics," Holly pointed out.

"True," Hadrian agreed, "so for the second possible reason, I think we have to go back to gender roles and society's expectations of men and women —" He paused, thinking it over. "Well, I'll make it simple. Male and female villains tend to occupy different types of roles. While there have certainly been some wicked and memorable female villains in culture and pop culture alike, their roles tend to be a little narrower than the male villains. They're evil matriarchs, or femme-fatales with some degree of seductiveness to them. Or wicked old crones, but that stereotype is far less common now than it once was."

"Not all of them," said Ronnie.

"True, not all of them, but the stereotype is pretty prevalent. Given that a villain is usually more closely tied to the development of the plot than the hero is, under those rules and stereotypes an opposite-sex villain might very well mean a different plot. Plus, gender-flipping villains tend to mean... sexing them up quite a bit. Then again, for some fans, what doesn't?"

"But — why do _we_ have to follow those rules?" Ronnie protested.

"That's the beauty of it," said Hadrian. "We don't! This was, as I said, mere speculation about why there aren't more gender-flipped antagonists in fanfiction. There's no rule that says we have to follow that set of thinking. So, how about we take a very brief moment to think about what our villains would be like, gender-flipped?"

"Long as we don't have them join us here," said Holly. "I don't care how non-canon this story is, I'm _not_ having Voldemort show up for demonstrations!"

 _AFRAID OF VOLDEMORT? I KNEW YOU WERE PATHETIC!_

Ronnie was back on her feet. "That's it!" she growled, and was about to lunge for the blackboard when Holly once again stopped her. _"Let go!_ I'm gonna hit it with the biggest Blasting Curse —!"

"No, you're not!" said Holly, holding her friend in a tight grip. "You're going to sit down, and relax. _It's just a blackboard!"_

"Yeah, that's why I won't feel bad about blasting it to —"

 _"No!"_ Holly said firmly, Once again, and with notably more difficulty this time, she made Ronnie sit back down — and to prevent her from jumping back up again the moment the blackboard decided to get snappish again, she sat down on the girl's lap.

Ronnie strained a little, but then relaxed underneath her, breathing a sigh that seemed to be part frustration, part... something else.

Holly realised that this was the first time, at least the first time she could remember, that she sat on anyone's lap, at least since she was a little girl. It actually felt kind of nice; Ronnie was bigger than she was, and surprisingly warm and soft...

"Are you two okay?" said Hadrian hesitantly.

"Yeah, I think so," said Holly.

"Yeah," said Ronnie softly, wrapping her arms around Holly. "I'm good."

 _Oh,_ Holly thought. _That's right. We're love interests in this continuity, or at least unless I get together with Neville. This should feel awkward, but it doesn't. I know Ronnie's a cuddly person, she's bound to get a little touchy-feely..._

 _She's very... comfortable..._

Hadrian raised an eyebrow — that one was new; for all the jokes about Emma Watson's 'eyebrow acting' Hermione had never raised a single eyebrow in quite that way before. "Yes," he said dryly. "I see you are perfectly fine. May I continue?"

Ronnie momentarily unwrapped one arm from Holly to make a slight 'go ahead' wave with one hand.

"All right," said Hadrian. "Thought experiment, then: what if Lucius Malfoy was female?"

"Wouldn't that just mean he was Narcissa?" said Ronnie. "What'd be the point in swapping Malfoy's parents?"

"What if we only swapped one of them?" said Hermione. "Exchange Lucius Malfoy for _Luciana_ Malfoy, but keep Narcissa the same — all of a sudden, young Draco is the son of a lesbian couple! Which means he's either adopted, or one of them got some temporary sex-swapping potion or even Polyjuice, so that they could conceive a child!"

"Well, er... That would be... different," said Holly.

"Admit it," Ronnie grinned. "You just got that idea because Holly's in my lap right now and that made you think about lesbians."

"I may have taken a slight inspiration," said Hadrian. "But you have to admit it would change things for Draco Malfoy. He'd have a very different upbringing — even if we do take Jo's word for it that alternate sexualities are more accepted in the wizarding world, there would still be a notable difference. Luciana could still be an evil Death Eater, of course — it could add an even more interesting twist on the pure-blood agenda; _I'd rather go gay than touch a Mudblood."_

Ronnie made a grimace. "That's kind of insulting," she said.

"It wouldn't have to be true," said Hadrian. "Luciana and Narcissa could genuinely love one another. The Malfoys' sole redeeming quality in canon is that they love each other, after all. But they could use that sentiment as a cover-up, to impress Voldemort."

"I'm a lesbian, and I find that idea sick," said Ronnie.

"Let's try a different one, then!" said Hadrian. "It does mean losing one of our more memorable female villains, but — Donovan Umbridge, name meaning 'Dark Warrior'! Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic, very intolerant disciplinarian, not unlike the wizarding world version of Vernon Dursley! Except more powerful and at least somewhat more competent!"

"Er — Hadrian, don't you think —"

"All right, then Ylva Greyback! 'Ylva' being the Scandinavian version of 'Úlfa,' meaning 'she-wolf.' Ferocious female werewolf — _nobody makes any jokes about 'that time of month,' okay?!"_

"Okay, but —

"Quintessa Quirrel! Shy, stuttering and unassuming woman, and yet she secretly is host to Voldemort! Bathsheba 'Sheba' Crouch, Death Eater condemned to Azkaban and later kept under the Imperius by her father!"

"Hadrian, we're running out of actual villains here!" said Holly. "At least villains that have an actual personality! If you keep this up, soon there'll only be Voldemort and Bellatrix left."

"Those two could easily be swapped," said Hadrian. "The vicious Dark Lady and her most faithful second-in-command. Even if we'd need to either swap Rudophus Lestrange to become female as well, or have Male!Bellatrix follow the same _'we go gay rather than touch a Mudblood'_ parole as Luciana and Narcissa, maybe the Black siblings simply were a little odd about these things..."

"The unfortunate implications keep piling up," said Holly.

"I'm starting to see another reason why villains aren't so popular in gender-flips," Ronnie murmured.

But Hadrian was ignoring them, which probably meant that one of his character traits would be a tendency to get lost in his own world of thoughts when he was speculating. "What would be a good name for Male!Bellatrix? He would be named for a star or a constellation, of course, all the Blacks were. What's a good star name? 'Canopus' is the second-brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius, and the mythological Canopus was the navigator for King Menelaus of Sparta... It could work. Of course, Voldemort needs some more thought, that anagram is going to take quite some time to come up with; she should have a common first name to justify her changing it, of course, but —"

 _ALL RIGHT, THAT'S IT!_

This sudden exclamation got even Hadrian to pay attention. The blackboard couldn't actually make a sound, of course, but given how the capital-letter sentence had broken up what was shaping up to be a very length paragraph, it was impossible not to take notice.

 _ **I'M SICK OF THIS!**_ The text on the blackboard was so large that the narrative had to present it in both bold and italics. _**YOU'RE GIVING MORE THOUGHT TO BLOODY FEM!BARTY CROUCH AND MALE!BELLATRIX THAN YOU GAVE TO**_ _ **ME**_ _ **?!**_

"What do you mean, than we gave to you?" said Holly. "You're not a gender-flipped character, you're a blackboard!"

 _YOU KEEP SAYING THAT! YOU REALLY DON'T KNOW, DO YOU?!_

"Know what?!"

 _I COULD HAVE BEEN_ _YOU_ _! I_ _SHOULD_ _HAVE BEEN YOU! I WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN AFRAID OF VOLDEMORT! I WOULDN'T HAVE PICKED A STUPID NAME LIKE 'HOLLY'!_ The blackboard was starting to shake and tremble.

"What the—?" Holly didn't understand any of this.

Hadrian, however, suddenly raised his eyebrows, understanding dawning on his face. "Of course," he said. "It's so obvious! It's _not_ the blackboard talking. It never was."

 _I WOULD HAVE MADE A BETTER FEM!HARRY!_ Cracks began forming on the blackboard.

"I think we'd better take cover!" said Hadrian hurriedly. He leapt over to Holly and Ronnie's chair, and before either of the girls could untangle themselves from one another, he'd pulled the chair backwards — just in time for the blackboard to explode.

Bits and pieces of blackboard scattered around the room, as a figure stumbled out onto the floor, swaying and supporting itself on the desk. It looked bizarrely strange, like a chalk drawing come to life, but the chalk outlines were swirling and fading and returning; the figure was switching between looking like an animated drawing and a real, living person.

Holly, having managed to entangle herself from Ronnie, gasped slightly in recognition.

The girl was almost the spitting image of a fifteen-year-old Lily Potter, except her eyes. Her eyes were very clearly those of James Potter.

"My name is Rose Potter," she said, panting heavily and raising a long, threatening wand towards them. "And I'm sick of this lecture... And I'm sick of _you!_ I'm taking over this story!"

"Wait, what?" said Ronnie from behind Holly.

 _"CLIFFHANGER!"_ shouted Rose.

"No, hang on, don't —" Hadrian began, but too late, The fragments of the blackboard slid up together on the floor, forming up to show, written on several fragments:

* * *

 **t|O BE | CO|ntIN|U|e|D.|..**

* * *

 **Author's note:** "—end the chapter," Hadrian sighed. "Too late!"


	4. Rose

**Well, it's been a sliiiiiightly longer wait for this chapter, so let's just jump straight in, shall we? This is...**

* * *

 **Her|mION|n|e gRa|nger|'|s |Guide| t|o|**

 **|G|ENDER-FLIP F|  
AN|F**

* * *

"There," said Rose lowering her wand as the shattered letters of the title vanished. "Much better. That title was _really_ starting to get on my nerves."

"What are you doing?" said Holly, looking at the destroyed remains of the title with some dismay — maybe it hadn't been much of a title, but she had sort of enjoyed seeing it at the top of each chapter.

"Told you at the end of the last chapter! I'm putting a stop to this nonsense!" Rose was still flickering between looking like a chalk drawing and a real, three-dimensional person, in a way that would have been quite expensive if fanfics had any kind of special effects budget. But the chalk outlines were fading and her "real" form seemed to be growing more solid by the second. "We've had _three chapters_ of stupid ramblings about stupid character creation techniques that don't even work, and I've had _enough!"_

"What do you mean, don't even work?" Ronnie demanded, suddenly stepping in front of Holly to shield her, and resisting Holly's attempts at pushing her away.

Rose snorted. Her eyes — hazel, just like James Potter's had been — narrowed as they met Holly's. "I mean _this,"_ she said. _"This_ is what all that rambling about backgrounds and pointless things like that leads to! One of the weakest, most pathetic, most pointless Fem!Harrys ever!"

"Oy!" Ronnie snapped before Holly could say anything. "You take that back! Holly's ten times the Fem!Harry you are, you bloody rejected drawing!"

"She's not even the Girl Who Lived! And that's _your_ fault!" Rose pointed an accusing finger at Ronnie, chalk outlines flashing around her. " _You're disqualified on account of being a girl,"_ she mocked, in a not-very-accurate imitation of Ronnie's tone. "Isn't that _just_ like a Ron Weasley? Couldn't stand having her more special than you, could you?! Had to remove everything about her that mattered, just so _you_ would look better in comparison!"

"I — _what?!"_ Ronnie's mouth opened and closed in pure, disbelieving shock at this accusation.

"You're not fooling me," said Rose. "You may be a girl now, but you're still the same jealous, traitorous fair-weather friend —!"

 _"She is not!"_ Holly, feeling her anger flare up, had managed to take advantage of Ronnie's shock to worm her way in front of the girl. "You don't know anything about Ron _or_ Ronnie!"

"I know she made you weak," said Rose with obvious contempt in her voice. "Look at you! Not the Girl Who Lived, not powerful, not special! You're a lousy duellist, you don't have a scar, you're _afraid of Voldemort!_ And look at what you're meant to have for love interests! Neville Longbottom's bad enough, but _a gender-bent Ron Weasley?!"_

 _"That's it!"_ Ronnie yelled and lunged at Rose, only to be lifted up in the air as the girl flicked her wand at her, flip around and then get hurled across the room to land in a pile of cushions that the Room of Requirement had helpfully provided at the very last second.

"Why you —" Holly reached for her wand, but Rose was quicker. Before Holly knew it, she was flying backwards, just like Ronnie had, and landed heavily in the cushion pile, halfway on top of Ronnie.

 _"I'm_ the Girl Who Lived!" Rose brushed aside her long, red hair to reveal a familiar-looking lightning bolt scar on her forehead. "I'm the most powerful witch my age!"

"I'll give you _'most powerful witch of your age'!"_ Ronnie snarled, trying to dig herself out of the cushions and get Holly and herself back onto their feet.

But just then, Rose flicked her wand again, and the cushions rose up around the two, stretching and changing shape to become long, thick ropes. They tried to dodge, but the ropes were on them, twisting themselves around them like snakes, binding their arms and legs. Before either Ronnie or Holly knew what was happening, they were both on the floor, trussed up and unable to move.

Rose stood triumphant. The chalk outlines had faded completely, and she looked like a normal teenage girl. "See how _pathetic_ you are?!" she crowed, pointing her wand at them — and yes, now that it had become real, Holly could clearly see that it was the old familiar holly-and-phoenix-feather wand, the twin of Voldemort's infamous wand. I could squash the both of you like insects!"

"But you won't," said Hadrian. "You won't hurt them."

His sudden appearance startled all three of them. The boy hadn't so much as been mentioned by the narrative since the end of the previous chapter; you'd almost have thought that the author had forgotten he was even there. But apparently, this wasn't quite the case, because here he was — after having remained completely passive while Rose showed up and first yelled at, then started hexing, Holly and Ronnie.

Hopefully he had a very good explanation for this silence while his friends needed him?

"Explanation?" said Hadrian, casting a glance at the narrative. "Several, actually. But the most important one is that I'm not crazy!"

"What?" said Rose, blinking.

"Well, I wouldn't have a chance against you, would I?" said Hadrian. "You're effortlessly doing non-verbal magic at the age of fifteen — I assume you're fifteen, since that's our established age in this fic. I may be an accomplished wizard, but I'm clearly not on _that_ level."

Rose opened her mouth to reply, but then stopped. Apparently, this wasn't the answer she'd expected. Her expression turned suspicious. "This is a trick, isn't it? You're trying to get me to lower my guard."

"Heavens forbid, no," said Hadrian. "You're clearly too smart to be manipulated that way. You already demonstrated your intellect through your use of the loopholes in this fic's established rules." He smiled, a surprisingly winning smile. "We established already in the first chapter, almost as a throwaway line, that the Room of Requirement here didn't have the same limits as in canon, and that it could create food, drink — and _life_. And almost accidentally, it created you. When I made that animated drawing of you on the blackboard, that was the start of it, wasn't it?"

"It... might have been," said Rose. Then, she tightened the grip on her wand. "And so what?!"

"So, you had become self-aware by the time Harry rejected you in order to become Holly," said Hadrian, sounding not unlike a brilliant detective from the last chapter of a mystery story, there to explain the murderer's nefarious plot and how the murder was committed. "That's why you left the surface of the blackboard before anyone got the idea of erasing you — retreating to a safe spot, so to speak."

"What the _hell_ are you talking about? _Get her!"_ Ronnie struggled in vain against her ropes.

"Sorry, Ronnie," said Hadrian. "I'm afraid I can't do that. She'd wipe the floor with me. Besides, I'm in the middle of my brilliant explanation here."

 _"Hadrian!"_ Holly started at him, shocked.

"Please allow me this moment, I think I'm having a character-establishing scene here," said Hadrian almost dismissively, before turning back to Rose. "Because it's character it comes down to, isn't it? I said it myself at the end of the first chapter: _In this story anything a character requests can be provided._ Emphasis on the _'character'_ part. You started making sarcastic comments via the text on the blackboard — and slowly, the narrative, and the readers, and even the three of us, were starting to view you as a character. Once that had happened, you were qualified to command the Room of Requirement. It doesn't have any loyalties, after all. You were a character, and you needed to get a proper body... and so it complied."

Rose, almost despite herself, looked impressed. "You _are_ a smart one, aren't you?"

"There are those who say I am," said Hadrian smugly. "But of course, figuring a plan out afterwards is nothing compared to being able to think one up to execute in the first place. I'm impressed." He bowed to her in a way that was impossible to tell whether was meant sincerely or ironically.

"I'll _impress_ you, you fucking —!" Ronnie snarled, once more trying to escape from her ropes and ending up rolling against Holly.

Rose turned back towards her. "Shut up!" she hissed, pointing her wand threateningly at Ronnie.

"Now, girls," said Hadrian smoothly. "No need for harsh words. Don't worry, Ronnie, Rose won't hurt you, or Holly."

"Oh, I won't?" said Rose, narrowing her eyes again.

"Of course you won't! Look at them! They're completely neutralised, and you're clearly so much better than them that it's not even funny. Hurting them would just turn you into a bully."

It took approximately one second for Rose's eyes to go from 'narrowed in suspicion' to 'wide open in surprise.' "A bully?!" she repeated.

"Well, what is a bully, if not someone who picks on those who are weaker and can't defend themselves?" said Hadrian logically. "You're not a bully, are you, Rose?"

"No!" Rose's eyes (which the narrative weirdly seemed to be focusing on to an unsettling degree) settled on a new expression, namely 'frowning in anger.' "The Dursleys were bullies. I _hate_ bullies."

"Right. And so of course you won't become one yourself."

And that was when Holly realised what Hadrian was doing. She could have kicked herself for not getting it sooner (well, she could have, if she hadn't been trussed-up and unable to move). All that flattery, all that talking had just been pure ego-stroking so that he could talk Rose into —

"Into what?" said Rose, who could read the narrative just as well as any of them.

"Nothing," said Holly hurriedly, silently cursing her role as the point-of-view character. It was so hard to keep any secrets or surprises — unless she was careful, her thoughts would be right there in the narrative for everyone to read. The only solution was to focus on something else, and trying to ignore that the narrative was pointing out that she was focusing on something else: "Can't we just, you know, talk about this?"

"Not until you tell me what it was you were thinking Hadrian was trying to talk me into," said Rose, turning her head to glare at the boy with renewed suspicion. "And it's not bullying if it's self-defence," she added as a new thought clearly came to her. _"They_ tried to attack _me!"_

"And they're _very_ sorry about that," said Hadrian. "But you defeated them easily. Look, they can barely even move! Kicking someone while they're down, that's something only a bully would do."

Rose's hands shook. For a moment, she looked like she was going to protest... but then she relaxed, her wand lowering. "Fine," she said. "I won't lower myself to that sort of behaviour. I'm not a bully."

"Good." Hadrian, slowly taking a step closer to her. "See, now we've got something established about your character. How about we —"

"Wait!" Rose narrowed her eyes. "Of course. That's what the narrative was going on about. That's what Holly realised. You almost had me!"

"What do you mean? We're just establishing some basic character traits for you," said Hadrian.

"Oh, really?" Rose lifted her wand again. "It starts out like that. Then we begin doing background story, strengths and abilities... and then come the weaknesses and limitations! And you'll remove everything special about me, just like you and that Weasley bitch did to _her!"_ She pointed at Holly with her wand. "I'm not going to become like that: Stupid, pathetic, _weak!"_

"Er, I think you've misunderstood —" Hadrian began, suddenly a little flustered, taking a step back as Rose turned her wand on him.

"Don't hurt him!" Holly called from her spot on the floor. She tried once more to raise herself, but only managed to flop against Ronnie.

Rose turned to look at Holly. Her hands trembled again, and then she lowered her wand once more. "You're just lucky I'm not a bully," she muttered, before turning her head to narrow her eyes at Hadrian. "Because I'm not. Even though I have all reason to take revenge. I was _rejected!"_

To Holly's surprise, and only for a brief moment, there was a lot of hurt in the girl's voice.

"Yes," said Hadrian softly. "I'm very sorry, but we didn't realise the implications. We thought you were just a drawing; we didn't know you were _real_."

"I wasn't. But _she_ wasn't either!" Rose glared at Holly.

And for a moment, Holly felt uncertain. Surely she, unlike Rose, had never been a drawing. She'd been Harry, and then Hermione's spell had... but when the drawing on the blackboard had changed to become her mirror image, what had _really_ happened? Had she and the drawing somehow merged, and in that case, how much of her was Harry-changed-by-a-spell, and how much of her was drawing-come-to-life? She had no memories of ever being a drawing, but perhaps...

Wait, why was she even thinking about this now?

"It's because you're weak," said Rose in response to the narrative, scoffing and shooting Rose a look of disgust. "And you're weak because you had it easy. You're the point-of-view character for this story, so everyone thinks you're _special_ , and you had these two to hold your hand through everything. _I_ had to rely on myself. No narrative on my side, no stupid so-called friends." Her expression of disgust changed briefly, and for a moment there was a strange look on Rose's face, before it was quickly replaced with mocking triumph. "Hah, just another example that the witch who only relies on herself is the strongest one! I don't have your stupid _limits!_ I can be anything I want!"

Holly felt herself soften. "Rose..." she began.

Rose ignored her. "I can be — I can be Lady Potter-Black, heir to the combined houses of Potter and Black, and so rich that the Malfoys look like paupers, and a phoenix Animagus, and a Metamorphmagus! I could even be... I could even be a princess! Or a beautiful elf, not like those simpering house-elves, I'm talking proper fantasy elves; tall and graceful and powerful! I can be a demigoddess... _I can be anything!"_

"And all shall love you and despair," said Ronnie dryly.

"Ronnie, shut up," Holly hissed.

"No! I'm not gonna listen to this loony anymore!" Ronnie glared at Rose. "D'you know what you are?"

"No, tell me," said Rose. "Is it something better or worse than being the one who's tied up and helpless on the floor?"

"You're a _Mary Sue!"_ said Ronnie.

 _"Ronnie!"_ If Holly's hands had been free, she would have clamped them both over the redhead's mouth, but it was too late.

"Girls, girls!" Hadrian said hurriedly. "Let's not use the term _'Mary Sue'_ here, shall we? It's a very controversial term anyway, and —"

Rose ignored both Holly and Hadrian, and her eyes narrowed once again (that was starting to become a character trait of hers, wasn't it?) as she moved closer to Ronnie. _"What_ — did — you — call — me!?"

 _"A — Mary — Sue!"_ said Ronnie slowly and overly clearly, as if speaking to a little child, and ignoring Holly's desperate pleas about stopping this as she raised her head and looked defiantly up at Rose.

Rose's hands shook as she pointed her wand at Ronnie. ("No, don't!" Holly yelped.)

At first, nothing seemed to happen. But then, Ronnie opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

"Silencing Charm," said Rose, as Ronnie began mouthing so many swear words that this story would have gained an adult-rating if they'd been at all audible. "I may not be a bully, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to her."

"You didn't have to do that!" said Holly.

"She's lucky I didn't do anything worse!" Rose snapped. "You heard what she called me!"

"But Rose," said Hadrian, seeming to have regained his confidence, "in her usual tactless way, Ronnie was right about one thing."

Rose turned on him, wand at the ready. _"I am not a Mary Sue!"_

"No, no, no, that wasn't what I was going to say!" Hadrian shrank back a little. "To be honest, I find the entire term to be essentially meaningless. It might have had some significance once, being a tongue-in-cheek reference to idealized self-insert or wish-fulfilment characters that took over a story, but nowadays the term is so broad that it can be used about any character. A lot of people seem to just use it as shorthand for _'female character I don't like_ ' or even _'female character that stands out in any way.'"_

"Don't try to confuse me!" Rose yelled.

"I'm not! But really, you don't _need_ any of those things you were talking about! Ladyships, huge fortunes, Metamorphmagus abilities, Elven princess titles... What were you planning on _doing_ with all that?"

"Doing?!" Rose faltered, but only for a moment. "I don't have to _do_ anything with them! The only thing that matters is that they'd make me an even greater Fem!Harry!"

"But that's just it: they wouldn't," said Hadrian. "Not really. They're just excess baggage. If you're just going to use them as a way to show how brilliant and powerful and special you are, and not give them any meaningful impact on anything —"

"It would be meaningful! You can't tell me that an Elven princess wouldn't be meaningful!"

"As a wish-fulfilment, certainly. But it's not going to make you a better Fem!Harry. All it'll do is put on another layer of make-up to make you look better and more impressive. It won't matter one bit if that's all there is to you."

"I..." Rose repeated, hesitating. "I suppose..."

"It's like a mask, isn't it?" Hadrian went on. "Beautiful, but hollow. It's who's _behind_ the mask that counts. We can help you there, Rose. Make certain you have a good foundation before you — _Wha!"_

This last part clearly wasn't part of Hadrian's planned speech, but it was understandable that he said it nonetheless — because Rose, her eyes hardening, had flicked her wand at him, and just like Ronnie and Holly before him, sent him flying across the room.

He landed in the increasingly-convenient pile of cushions, just missing the tied-up Holly and Ronnie.

Rose was breathing heavily, sparks shooting out of her wand. _"Stay away from me!"_ she yelled. "I've had it with you! I've had it with _all_ of you! I don't need your advice! I don't need _anything_ from you! _I'm the Girl Who Lived!"_ Rose raised her wand to fling another curse at Holly... but once again her hands shook. "No," she said in a softer voice, lowering her wand once again. "I'm not a bully. I don't attack those who can't defend themselves. I _don't."_

Hadrian was breathing heavily next to Holly and Ronnie; instead of trying to get back to his feet he just lay in the cushion pile, looking at Rose but not making any sort of move against her. "Rose," he said urgently. "Listen to me. I wasn't going to say it, but you're unstable. You're unfinished as a character, and that makes you —"

 _"Does not!"_ Rose screeched.

"You're trying to make yourself a proper character by giving yourselves all sorts of powers and privileges, but that's not going to work!" Hadrian continued. "That's what I was trying to tell you! They won't help at all unless you have a core, a real personality..."

 _"I do have a real personality!"_

"What's your favourite colour?"

"I — what?"

"What's your favourite food? Who's your best friend? Your favourite Quidditch team? What makes you happy? Angry? Sad? What's your stand on Muggle relations? Have you ever had any celebrity crushes? What sort of clothes do you like to wear? What would you see if you looked into the Mirror of Erised? What would your Boggart be? How old are you?"

Rose took a step back at the torrent of questions. To Holly's surprise, she whimpered, suddenly looking more like a scared little child than the most powerful witch her age. "I... don't know..."

"How can you be a real personality if you don't know the answer to _any_ of those questions?"

Rose's lip quivered. But then, once again, her expression hardened. "I don't need any of that! Meaningless details! I'm... I'm Rose Potter, the Girl Who Lived!" She stood up straight, defiant, glaring at Hadrian. "I'll show you! I'll show _all_ of you!"

There was a loud _CRACK_ , and she was gone.

Holly blinked. For a moment, she thought Rose had disintegrated or something, but then she realised that that loud crack was the exact noise that always signified that someone had Disapparated from the area.

Hadrian waited for the time it took that paragraph to be written to make certain Rose really was gone, before he got out of the cushion pile and turned to Holly and Ronnie. "Are you girls all right?"

"Fine," said Holly, almost truthfully. "Did she just Disapparate? I thought you couldn't Apparate on Hogwarts grounds...!"

 _"She_ can," Hadrian sighed. "It's part of her entire character deal. I'll explain once I've got you out of these ropes. Hold still, will you — _Diffindo!"_

The precise Severing Charm cut through the ropes binding Holly and Ronnie, but (because Hadrian was as skilled with these things as canon Hermione was) without harming the girls themselves. The ropes fell apart all around them, and they could finally sit up and rub their limbs, which were a little sore after their brief stint in bondage.

Ronnie was still opening and closing her mouth, so Hadrian pointed his wand at her with a _"Finite Incantatem!"_

 _"—AND SHOVE IT UP HER FUCKING ARSE!"_ Ronnie yelled, and then realised she could hear her own voice again. "Oh," she said, at a much lower volume, turning slightly pink.

"Well, good, now we know there's nothing wrong with you," said Hadrian.

Flustered and clearly trying to hide her embarrassment, Ronnie turned on him. "What were you doing, flattering her like that?! _You're clearly too smart for me, you're so strong and wonderful!"_ (Ronnie was better at imitating people than Rose was; her mocking actually did sound kind of like Hadrian.)

"I had to say _something_ to keep her from hexing us, didn't I?" said Hadrian. "Trust me, if a poorly-conceived, but powerful Fem!Harry has a grudge against you..." He paused. "Let's not say it's not much fun."

Ronnie grumbled, but let him help her to her feet. "Well, at least she's gone now."

"For the moment," said Hadrian. "She'll be back. She didn't vanish from the narrative, only from the scene."

"Yeah, about that...!" said Holly. "How could she Disapparate?"

"It's because she's still poorly-defined as a character," Hadrian explained. "The narrative hasn't established limits for her yet... and it is a staple of very powerful Harrys that they can do things other wizards can't. Break through the Anti-Apparition Charms is one of those things."

"So if we tried to do the same..." said Holly.

"We'd fail. Even I'm too defined by now to step around in-universe rules. I know my limits, and I'm pretty sure it's not too long before it _Happens_ to me too. My conversation with Rose seemed to establish a lot about my personality, after all. I'm apparently very smooth and self-assured for as long as I think I'm in control of a situation, but if I'm not in control I tend to lose some of my confidence. We might have to revise some of my backstory..."

 _"Hadrian!"_ Ronnie grabbed his shoulders and shook him a little.

"Right. Right. This isn't the time." Hadrian took a deep breath. "Sorry. I think I poured it on a little too thick in my character-establishing moment. I seem to have gained a tendency to talk at length..."

"So she was right?" said Holly, feeling weirdly disappointed. "In a way, anyway. Becoming defined as characters has made us weaker."

"No, it hasn't," said Hadrian. "People too often mistake powers for strength. We don't have her power, but we have something she doesn't — we have backgrounds, personalities, _cores_. We know who we are. Rose, however...? Outside the single character trait I managed to give her, of not wanting to be a bully, she doesn't have a clue who she is. You saw her. She couldn't answer a single one of my questions."

"I'm not certain _I_ could have answered all of them," said Holly.

"But you could answer _some_ , if not most of them. Rose couldn't. I told her she was unstable, and she is. She's empty, she doesn't have a core. And she rejected my attempts at giving her one."

Holly thought about this, and then understanding dawned on her. "She's a _baby,"_ she said in surprise. "In terms of character, at least, Rose is a baby. No background, no experience, no memories. Almost all emotion and almost no reason."

"A baby who can do perfect non-verbal magic, and Apparate on Hogwarts grounds," said Ronnie dryly. "And who insulted us, and tied us up. Not sure I feel too terribly sorry for her."

"Don't you see, Ronnie?" Holly swallowed. "It could have been me. When I had the two Fem!Harry drawings in front of me, I just picked the black-haired girl because I didn't want to change too much. I could easily have picked to become the red-haired one instead, and then Rose would be me right now and I would be... her..."

"Better stop that line of thought before it gets too confusing," said Ronnie. "Come on, Hol, you're nothing like her!"

"But I could have been," said Holly. She gently wrapped her arms around Ronnie, hugging her. "Just a random choice, Ronnie. That's all that separates us."

Ronnie trembled a little, but then sighed, and once again she relaxed, returning the hug. "When did you get so existential, anyway?" she said softly.

"When I gained an accidental sister, I think," said Holly.

"Sister?" Ronnie blinked.

"Well, what else would you call her?"

"That's easy! I'd call her a fucking b—"

 _"Without_ spurting swear words and insults, I mean!" Holly interrupted. "We were born at the same time, from the same story. She's my sister — my _baby_ sister.. And right now, she's out there, she's confused and alone and she doesn't have a clue who she is."

Ronnie was silent for a bit. "I see what you're doing, you know," she finally said.

"Doing? Me?" Holly tried to look innocent.

"Come on, Hol! You're trying to make sure both me and the readers feel sorry for Rose! Just so we won't despise her, and we'll start cheering for her to be redeemed."

"I wasn't —" Holly began, and then gave up. "It was that obvious?"

"You _were_ laying it on a little thick." But then, all of a sudden, Ronnie grinned, and leaned in to briefly press her lips against Holly's.

It wasn't a long kiss, nor a very passionate one. If someone ever got the idea of making a list over Best Kisses In _Harry Potter_ Fanfiction, this one wouldn't even have made it to the Top Hundred. But it made Holly's heart flutter, and as Ronnie drew back after only a brief second, Holly felt almost as giddy as if she was experiencing her character euphoria all over again.

"All right," said Ronnie. "You convinced me. Let's help your sister. What's the plan?"

"P-plan?" Holly managed to say, trying to get her breath back under control. "I, er, I don't actually have a plan."

"Lucky for you two that I'm here, then," said Hadrian. Once aside, he'd stepped aside to allow the girls the readers' full attentions while they talked and kissed; now he re-inserted himself into the narrative, back to his confident self. "If you're quite finished with the fanservice, that is."

"That wasn't fanservice!" said Ronnie.

"Please. Readers of _Weasley Girl_ have been wanting you and Harry to kiss for long enough. That kiss was _double_ fanservice."

 _"You're_ a double prat."

"Will you two stop it?" said Holly. "Hadrian, if you have an idea for how to help Rose, please tell us."

"Right." Hadrian visibly pulled himself together. "Of course. Sorry. I do have an idea... but I suppose I should warn you that it's not entirely risk-free."

"I don't care," said Holly.

"Didn't think you would, but let me finish. You see, since Rose has rejected proper character development, there's always a chance that my plan backfires and ends up turning her into a violent Dark witch, worse than Bellatrix Lestrange!"

"It won't," said Holly. "She might not be developed, but when all is said and done, she's still a Harry Potter, like me. She couldn't become evil."

"Do you have any idea how many utterly vile and despicable Harry Potters there are in some of the fanfics out there?" said Hadrian. "Even worse, she's a _Rose_ Potter. You remember why you yourself didn't want the name Rose, don't you?"

"Yes, but she's not _that_ Rose Potter. She's not a ninja who uses bullet-time. Or a druidess. Or a nudist."

 _"Yet,"_ Ronnie muttered.

"It won't come to that," said Holly firmly. "What's the plan, Hadrian?"

"It's simple," said Hadrian. "We continue with the thread Rose has started. Since she made the scene, this story officially became an actual _story —_ instead of just a series of glorified lectures. Now we have a plot going on. Not much of one, admittedly, but still a plot."

"I suppose we do?" said Holly.

"Really weird plot," Ronnie agreed, "but still."

"Right. And we can use that." Hadrian rubbed his hands together. "First of all, we need to start a new chapter."

"Already?!" said Ronnie, looking at the word count. "We're only about five thousand in on this chapter. Chapter _two_ was at least _ten_ thousand words."

"Whoever said we were operating with a set chapter length?" said Hadrian. "Besides, the canon books usually have shorter chapters. I believe the average length for chapters in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, for instance, is between four and five thousand words."

"Well, yeah..." Ronnie muttered. "It's just that the _Weasley Girl_ stories have longer chapters, so I suppose I just feel like anything less than six thousand words is too short."

"Short of going back and padding this chapter out with more arguing, I don't think there's much we can do about that," said Hadrian. "Besides, you want this plan to work, don't you?"

"Of course, but —"

"Then I have to explain it to you between chapters. The readers can't be told what it is before it's put into action."

"Of course," said Holly. "It's one of the oldest narrative tricks in the book! If a plan is discussed in detail on-screen, then it's going to fail or at least there'll be unforeseen complications — but if the plan is made off-screen, it goes off without a hitch! There's even a page for it on _TVTropes!_ They call it _Unspoken Plan Guarantee!"_

"Exactly," said Hadrian. "So if the author would just end the chapter here, I can start explaining..."

In response, since the blackboard was no longer available, the words formed directly on the wall:

* * *

 **TO BE CONTINUED...**

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** "Thank you," said Hadrian.


End file.
